look at the irs are exactly right. absolutely horrific abuse of power. cases havedividual come forward. two that have been the eater of this country in the last decade feel the same way. now, i said i think this is a really important debate to have. and i told him in conference, i do not lean you for using the only legislative vehicle we is towhat we really need have a serious hearing investigation where you actually hold people accountable and you look at the law and you change

it. you do not have the same director or deputy -- there have multiple people. people under investigation right now. there will be laws. if you look at the financial services bill that has gone through appropriations. not only is the irs defunded for but they have cut the budget. i think the same thing needs to happen with the possible examination of the nsa. but i do not think we ought to immediately toss out a program until we think about it and look at it, you know, and the homeland security people on both sides of the aisle tell us it has done the job. >> ok. one thing i would like to point

out though -- if the program were abused, we would not know. let me rephrase that. we would not know it until it was too late. know or have i read that the way this deal was supposed to work was when the controversy first kind of started, they were going to monitor these phone calls to find terrorists outside the united states. when that person contacted someone within the united states, they were going to go get a fisa order for that person. i felt a little bit uneasy about that, but i remember thinking, well, you know if it is one person or two people that are terrorists, you know, maybe. but , there are things we

can do to make the united states saying, well, we need this database of phone calls. we need a database of this. we need a database of that. regardless, the fact is they have the capability of doing it, right? we do not know what they are or what they are not doing. they are saying no. they are saying supposedly they are really aren't. is if they have the power, eventually it will get abused. so, my larger point to you is hopefully you will take a look at that and you have a chance to reconsider this stuff. saying,e -- people are

i know the people running these programs. the are good people. they are trustworthy. the good people are not always going to be there. and i am sure for the old who vote for the irs that were viewing taxpayers were great people. that is the response that i have. you know. i would really like for you to reconsider that. keep in mind there is no way -- >> yeah, i agree. [applause] point. agree with your congress will reconsider this. there are people looking at it. but the key part to me is so far -- and i want to triple underline so far -- there are no abuses. no person has come forward. says america who

isn't free and runs off to china and russia to tell about it is not exactly my idea of a great american patriot. i do put a lot of trust in the people who had defended the united states of america their entire careers with distinction and with honor and with the .alor when they walk in and tell me, this is what it is and we are not doing this and you're not doing that and we're not doing this and we asked them the question, then i have got to listen to that before i jerked the rug out from under them. congress is looking at this. it will continue. you, i always worry about the concentrations of power and and eventual liberty. i think that is what keeps free, that individual

citizens are passionate about you havethe same time, these abuses. you have got to know where they and i do not think we have lost these freedoms. had, we would not be having this conversation on c- span. it is not china. there is the fbi case and they lost that case -- >> [indiscernible] >> we will see what happens. >> [indiscernible] the consent of the court -- [applause] in the presidential election we do not get to a point the attorney general. >> [indiscernible] what's that?

>> [indiscernible] >> we had a lot of republican candidates running. [applause] let me get a microphone to you. andhank you for coming joining us, congressman. >> thank you for joining me. at >> just a quick announcement .@their art to. one to audit the fed. last week congressman cole voted audit the fed. whoever has held that, please let it go. the other is to define obamacare. and congressman cole voted for appealing that on the federal level. 2 question to you, sir, vote had to do with raising the debt ceiling -- i probably need my glasses to read this.

you were one of three congressman who voted to raise the debt ceiling, which basically empower the big spenders to keep spending whenever they want to spend. i take issue with that, sir. continuing resolution was over $1 trillion. if there is anything unconstitutional but you do not i you have nole business voting on that as an expenditure. i need some explanation on that, sir. >> i was not one of three congressman. it was part of honest the and in negotiating a $1.23 trillion out

of the debt. the consequences of not raising would have been across the board. it would have been a 50% cut in all federal spending. that is defense. it takes a while to turn the ship around and get in the right direction. we have started to make that turn. that is why i voted for the ryan budget. a every single year i have been in 120 or 130e get people at most to vote for that. it would be shutting down or essentially crippling the country. yes, sir? that meet get you a microphone so they can hear you back there. here you go. microphone.

you, congressman cole. >> thank you. when we go into default, we you speak to what will happen to the bond market and how much we will have to pay on bonds that we heard -- that we are currently getting almost nothing on. what is the total impact on our country, and after our country goes down, what will happen to the world economy of the entire world? the pigs - mind that -i-g-s -- are almost down now. >> over 30 years, the united

intes has paid its debts full on time tomorrow ever it owed money to. that is the symbol of financial stability. that is one of the things that hamilton talked about. borrow money to pay off the revolutionary war debts and redeem the bonds that had been given to revolutionary soldiers that were sold to speculators because they thought they were never going to get that money and established the sick credit in the night it states. i think it is a very dangerous thing. you, if the most credit worthy institution in the world defaults, your interest rates are going up. on your homes, on your cars, on your credit cards, you name it. they will all go up. if you get credit at all. what happens to the stock market? i guarantee you it will take a terrific it, a terrific beating.

default, i think would be much more dangerous. you put your finger on another key point. a lot of other countries are in even worse situations than we are. think it wouldi be something like the great depression again. do i know that for a fact? nope. i am in congress. do you want me to run that risk? i'm not sure. think it would be bad if the united states started defaulting on its obligations. right now the interest on the debt is about six percent of the federal budget. big, but not gigantic, because we are borrowing fairly cheaply. our obligations, ok, you are paying the medicaid system, paying the social security system, you will get social security. to fight for the united states, you are going to get paid.

you will get your pension, what you are entitled to. we have lots of obligations to people that are not borrowing money. they are obligations to american citizens. it is not enough if you just cut the money to the people you have borrowed money from. which is pretty bad. used if the people you borrowed money from. you make the obligation to your citizens. there are better ways -- we have balanced the budget before. only four times in 50 years. it happened to be with a democratic president and a republican congress. the deficits were considerably lower until the last five years than they have been since then. we are making progress. .ut we have got to be careful yes, sir, let me get that microphone right to you. we will give you your chance.

look, everyone will get a chance to answer, i promise. >> an article written by george will and he stated that obamacare would fail under its own weight. for one have more faith than that in congress changing it. [applause] i was wondering what your opinion was of this? i share yourdays frustration. congress would change it if the american people would change congress. when you change the house of representatives in 2010, it voted 40 times to get rid of this thing. but we have got to get the senate and we have to get a president that will work with us instead of against us. the ultimate solution is usually at the ballot box. it is frustrating when you are states that are conservative at home and you have voted against the president on two different

occasions and elected every member you've got and every vote you have had, but we did not win the election in enough laces. we won it here, but we did not win it enough. the have to be some changes. and mentioned those. there are places where the law is under appeal. it is not as though we do not change what we can when we can. at 500 rid of the 1040. other pieces of legislation. guys who passed this thing sometimes think, it is pretty bad in this area. the vice tax. the senate has voted on a bipartisan pieces to get rid of it. i think you keep chipping away. the last thing is, let's just be real -- the thing is not working real well. the president of the united states, it it is his signature

piece of legislation, he says i want to push the business mandate off of here because it is not ready yet. that is crazy. be pushed offth together. when you got a guy like howard dean who supported this saying, look, the independent payment advisory .oard is not going to work it is going to collapse. that tells you something. think itand folks who is a do or die moment. i actually see the trend moving forward. i can tell you what it was like to be on the floor and talk for months and months. some democrats that helped us. and we took it to the last play, until they finally had some democrats that broke on this. and i remember thinking at the

time, my gosh, it is the end of the world. do you remember how popular the public and party was in 2009? think back to 2009. talk about roadkill. and months later because republicans did the important vote, again, they have the majority in the house and i think you keep the fight up every single day. you come at it every each way you can. you repeal the parts you can and you try over time to change, because i think it is real bad policy and irresponsible legislation. it is promising benefits it will never be able to approve in the long run, in my view. we already have a shortage of 12,000 doctors and the are being replaced by -- a with the iressa, there is

good chance you are never going to see. , there is a good chance you are never going to see. [applause] you are right about the incentives. because we promise you coverage does not mean we can promise you care. do not have enough physicians and healthcare providers out there because they think this thing is too burdensome and restrictive. that is what is really going to push up prices even higher than the are today. i have talked to a lot of positions. particularly physicians to have said, i am getting out of here. i do not have to stay here anymore. i am done. i am getting out of practice. fortunately, more and more people, i think, understand this. tryingin, they have been to sell this dog for three

years. it is just not hunting. people sort of know it. fight up.o keep the honestly you have to get people in other parts of the country to see it the way we see it here. and i can think of a number of people who vote for democratic senators or the president, you know, also feel this way about, but they have other issues that are more important to them than obamacare. they want to vote democratic perhaps on those issues. fundamentally i think this is a really dangerous policy. >> pinkie very much. an oldt know if i'm just country boy. head.ot hit it into my we have these problems with social security and medicaid, and yet we seem to come up with money to send around the world.

[applause] i hear that dumb country boy line, i put my hand on my wallet. good you make a very point. a a 24% cut ind foreign aid. bignt you to understand how or small this is in the overall budget. the overall budget of the united states -- that is everything, social security, medicare, 5 trillion.-- $3. 20%. the foreign aid budget which includes every embassy in the world is about $50 billion. about 700on will cut billion.

you can save some money, but you will not solve the problem. you should sink some money. one thing i can tell you. when you talk about which countries you want to cut the aid from, you need to sometimes stop and ask tough questions whether it is or is not in our interest to read we get humanitarian aid, two, but we majorly try to affect countries like egypt. fought until 1973. we began getting the made in 1978. we have a vested interest. they allow us to fly into iraq and afghanistan. warshipss us in their to the frontline, through the suez canal. and egyptian intelligence has cooperated with the united states extensively in the middle east and has been very helpful.

is that a good investment or a bad investment? particularly given the turmoil there right now. that is a question every single year. remember. we have changed administrations multiple times. democrat, republican, conservative, liberal. congress has men in different control at different times. changeot as if we do not where we give money and cut it off or behavior. but to your point, are we stretched then, yes? secondly, each individual country, there is always a calculus about whether it is in our interest or it's not. sometimes it is. sometimes it's not. >> [indiscernible] someone.some will and believe me. it is pretty varied as to

whether they do or not. tell you theng to times they are supportive. and you win votes are one thing. i can tell you the intelligence cooperation, the movements of american planes over someone else's airspace to help american troops, that is a lot more meaningful than a human vote. i get your time. these things do get looked at. these decisions do change. we are cutting the foreign aid budget and the house. i guess the senate will cut some. probably not as much as we would in the house. obviously there will be some reductions. are also tools of diplomacy. and sometimes -- i remember talking to the general on the defense appropriations subcommittee and he says, you know, if you have to send me there, i should -- i should like to have some friends there when i arrived.

some of this is food, humanitarian. commodity.ly some usually something made in this country. at the aim is to try to influence and affect behavior in ways that help the united states. i can't tell you we always get it right, because we don't. clearly we make mistakes. we will continue to try to be vigilant and reduce in this area. it is a great question and we are still wrestling with it. let me go all the way back, back here. whoever gets the first mic. on the aisle back here. >> i've been hearing a lot about change here lately. reading a lot about change. changed costs the of living. that has been affect thing a lot of people for a lot of time.

when are we going to change spending? >> i would like to. discretionarye budget in the united states for three years in a row. the last time that helped was in the 1940's. that is 40% of the budget. medicare, budget are medicaid, social security, food stamps, veterans benefits. most of those things are what they call nondiscretionary. nobody is talking about cutting them absolutely. but the rate of growth is pretty phenomenal. we have changed social security before. 1964.y remember it is going to be 66, 67 -- 66, 66 and a half or something.

maker, the changes you can at the margins, that saves you a lot of money over time. those are the kinds of issues, sooner or later, the country is going to have to deal with. but the spending -- congress is appropriating less money than it has appropriated. budget,r side of the the popular side is growing very rapidly. the baby boomers are retiring. that is the largest generation ever. they are living longer than any generation ever. upn we set social security -- we did not have medicare and so 1965 -- the average person in until 62 or lived 63. you got your first check at 65. only in america.

today at 65, you have a better than 50% chance of being 85 and about a 20% chance of getting to 92. i think that is a good thing. that's not a bad thing. adjust someve to things? yes. nobody is talking about things that will hurt people now. but those things are going to be on the table for debate. senior or later you have to deal thinkhe budget. don't that these adjustments are not happening. they already are. so, there is more revenue coming in. it would also help, by the way, if the economy started growing. that is one of the big disagreements with the president. an economy that is growing by three percent or four percent generates a lot more tax revenue than an economy growing at 1.5%.

people do not want to be unemployed. but you've got unemployment insurance, medicaid. they are not working. we are paying. getting the economy moving is just as important as cutting. yes, let me get right here in the back -- on the side. >> [indiscernible] >> yes, it is on. >> our mailbox is absolutely full of conservative urbanization's requesting money. organizations are dealing with exactly the same issues, which means that our money is aing fragmented. i am certain

percentage of those are scams where the money is filtered into private pockets. i'm also sure that some of those are filtering money into liberal hands. just putan say, well, your money into the republican party. well, if you were talking about the oklahoma republican party, that's a great idea. but i cannot in good conscience give money to the national republican party -- [applause] all of those eastern liberals involved. so what is your device? is their art about as many democrats here as republicans and i beg they get their mailboxes full, too.

is read asy instinct much as you want and throw away the rest of it. one, you do not have to give a dime. it is the united states of america, you don't have to do it. don't let anyone do to him to do it. certainly are having trouble, don't do it. don't do it. it if you want to give, i think the best thing is to give to candidates or individuals. the oklahomaup democratic chairman and get an appointment. we are happy to get a call. i usually think your local candidate. people running for county commissioner, school board, city council. it's going to have a lot to do with your life. the guy who determines whether

your garden will be cut or not is a pretty important guy. they come in all shapes and sizes. most americans never give a dime. a checkrity never write to any person or any party. having been in, politics -- this is not a partisan statement -- the personal knock on doors, the personal chart signs, the person who will put your bumper sticker on the outside of their window, mom wasa commitment. my a bank teller with a high school education. my dad was a master sergeant. doors.cked on a lot of you talk to a lot of people. she was republican. this was a very democratic town

back in 1978. they mostly voted on her because they liked helen. chiklits to kids and dog biscuits to dogs, and you sort of like a lady that does that. i tip my cap to the president of the united states. he raised more money than anybody ever has and in small increments. go online. you have the ability to get on your computer and find out a lot about anything and find any point of view, by the way, you want to find. the whole political spectrum of america is available to you. do not just write a check. check them out. see what other people think. believe me, you will get more requests. you will.

say,e always come and well, gosh, why are they wasting you stopmoney? i say, sending money, they will stop sending you mail. it will take a while. don't worry about them. you decide where you use your dollars. i just picked the local candidates i like for local office. but again, if you want to run for the district, that is fine, too, and he will -- and people american you the political process is expensive. but one aircraft carrier costs more than all the political contributions. so, actually if you look at it from the size of our economy, it is pretty responsive, pretty open, and you can have an impact if you choose to do it. at you

do not have to vote if you don't want to. don't vote, if you you have to pay a fine. we do not do that. it is not up for us to tell you to vote. although i think you ought to vote. write appear. again, we are going to get there, everybody. >> hi. larry schaffer from norman. i'm a rhino. anyone want to know what a rhino is? a rhino is a republican in name only. ask thelike to audience, is there anyone here who would not like to say 50% on your health insurance? would not like to? because of the affordable care act, people in new york and

california are saving 50% because of the insurance .xchanges the insurance companies are competing against each other. that is one result of the affordable care act. know, things come from the east and the west coast and then they come here to us. the other thing -- my actual is related to this lady's comments, the definition of insanity. times to has voted 40 try to repeal that. if we know it's not going to be repealed and it is a law that is taking place, why do we continue to do that? you know, sometimes it is not

the repeal of the whole thing. it is targeted. some of these things are things ,ike getting rid of the 1040 which we left in the original bill, and on reflections, democrats decided, you know, people in the small business community work against that, too. and we have been screaming for a long time about the stream of revenue coming in for assisted- program.upporting the it is to love. it is going to collapse. secretary sebelius looked at it and said, you know, you are right. at sometimes you get surprised in politics. which is passed the bill -- in normandy will be interested.

student loans. it was surprising to us. when they looked at it, they found that it was pretty close to what the president recommended in his budget. at the end of the day, he ended up working with the republican house and the democratic and it, changed to where it is linked to the 10-year treasury rate. again, obviously new members come. if every soldier wants to be in combat, or every new democrat and republican wants to be on the obamacare fight on one side or the other. they want to say i voted for it or i voted to repeal it. they want to be able to go home and say that. i always say whether you are for it or not, it it is a very

contentious, complex these of legislation. we are going to be debating it, arguing about it for a long time to come. it.ill also be reshaping even republicans will tell you that. so, just -- you know, strap on your safety belt. gamee in this bumper car on obamacare for quite some time. the case has not yet made to settle. and frankly as someone who does not believe in it, clearly the case has not been made to it rid of it or we would have a different person in the white house. the american people want this debate to continue, because they did not change anything. they kept the same balance of power. this is going to be decided one way or another. you are going to have the president reelected with a

democratic house and a strong majority in the senate or the republicans thought, surely we will beat this guy this time. no one has ever had unemployment decide. oddly enough the president -- the first president in american astory to get elected with lower percentage of the popular vote and a lower electoral vote. that has never happened. close. i think as you suggest, if this turns out to be a great success, the facts on the ground will win the argument. the rest of us believe, it turns into an overly burden, it will be modified into some more acceptable form of overtime. overtime. go ahead. we will let you have a follow- up. we are thew-up is

richest per capita nation in the world. what is wrong with this picture that 30 million people who are working to not have health insurance? >> we are the richest country. they may not have health care, but it does not mean they don't have health insurance. there are things we can do to help in that regard. for instance we should be able to sell insurance across state boundaries. [applause] allow businesses to combine and purchase at the same rate if they have a larger pool. that is called the associated health care plan. we ought to -- the insurance rates for healthcare providers are unbelievably high in the united states. no one pays anything remotely

like that. at those are common sense things that don't cost a lot of money, but they expand accessibility and bring down prices. so the step-by-step kind of changes are the way you ought to go. instead we tried something much bigger. shared concerns with a lot of folks that this is an overreach and not sustainable fiscally. insurance mandates in this country. i have a hard time telling you what you have got to do. you know, i have a pretty good idea what i think you ought to do. but i think you ought to be very careful telling you what you have to do. this is the united states of america. it is a free entry. a lot of people who do not have health insurance -- some of them by the way our young adults, having been there -- and it is a gamble for them. att of them will when it. -- will win it.

about a lot more insurance. some people need insurance and they are not buying it. why? we have done analysis of markets. a significant portion you say they don't want it, don't need it, whatever. know, the debate is not going to stop. and it should not stop until the country makes up its mind. people are sincerely very opposed to this. my friends on the other side have a hard time understanding. they say, you lost congress over this deal. cannot show me a political poll or the majority of american people yet think this is a good idea. the overwhelming plurality think it is a bad idea. a smaller amount think it is a good idea. must people are not sure one way

or the other. i have never seen anything run into that kind of resistance before, which tells me it was not the together very well. i can tell you. i have been there. they would not take this back to the senate because they could not get succeed votes. and there was tremendous pressure rocks on democrats. there was not a single republican vote for it. bipartisanever a vote for this bill. that was not true of medicare or social security. you got that through because you got that kind of muscle. do not be surprised when the other side resist's until the bitter end. that is what is going on. the gentleman right here --

>> representative cole, i appreciate you coming before us today. i appreciate what you doing congress. have my feeling that we lost our way. we have no leadership. not in the 535 people who run this nation. [applause] i think part of the problem, and frustration,uine my wife is a registered democrat and i have the obama side -- i have the obama sign in my yard. am an american. vote for thee to person i wanted to in this election because oklahoma's voting rules are so harsh. think most of the stuff we do

at the local level seems to be doing ok. the idea is if we started as a state painting our federal taxes and let the state decide when they will pay the federal government and have it done that way? i've said ais -- lot of things and i don't expect you to listen to all of them. maybe question -- i don't think 1970 thederstand since fed is creating currency out of nothing but fed and -- thin air. decide to quit taking american dollars, and it looks like that process has started, there is nothing the federal government is going to be able to do about it. what you you think of that, sir? >> let me answer some of your the questions and then i will

get to the fed question because i think that is one of the big debates that will be going on. on your point about keeping everything local, i actually agree. we have a great government here. moresponded well to the disaster -- to the moore disaster. i think the legislature has done a pretty good job. with the federal government i share some of your disappointment. we have a constitution today because the articles of confederation did not work. title government living on handouts from the state government was a problem during the revolution and stuff did not get done. the framers decided they needed that kind of mechanism. they were very critical of it. said that government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master, something like that, and

it is. they put the bill of rights and, a lot of things that nobody had done it anything for before. that is how we operate. you get a social security check or medicare check or in the military, the federal government is where that comes from, and that's a sizable portion of the federal government. more money goes to those programs than anything else. that, yout to end all want to think twice about doing it. on the fed question, there is the point about auditing the fed. i think that is a good thing to do. i worry about the amount of currency that has been created out of thin air. say we will see more inflation in the wake of what has happened since 2008. this has not occurred. i thought it

would. maybe, as worried, you are about the chinese, because honestly they will think twice about making an american debt valueless. they will want to invest back in this country. it is kind of like japanese auto companies. sooner or later we start putting plants back here. the next set appointment will be an interesting appointment. i would feel better if somebody else was making it. i'm not a financial expert on the fed. i will tell you this. i have talked to a lot of bankers and a lot of people. i am talking about guys who run the local banks here. said thathem have they wanted to get rid of it. theyusually argued that

don't need that mechanism to control the currency. we have a -- were boom and busts just had one called the great recession. from what i read, a lot of what the fed did was the wrong stuff to do and made it worse. again, let's audit. let's see what they are doing. let's have this discussion on the debt. i share your concern about the printing of money. i really do. we need more to back it up than we have right now. let's go right over here to this lady. >> thank you for being here. first of all i have a lot of comments. on health care, you mentioned coburn is against the funding -- >> no. he would love to defund

obamacare. >> conservatives like a cruise have said that the house -- ted cruz have said that the house that woulda bill fund everything except obamacare and convince americans that obama and the democrats are willing to shut down the government. you mentioned coburn, but you did not say hancock. you did not mention breitenstein. know, nothing has been done. let's try something different. you mentioned medicare, medicaid , and social security in the same sentence. we pay for it. >> we did. >> people believe that medicare

-- they say, well, you are a senior citizen. yes, i am. then how come you are taking stuff from the government? i paid for my health care. i paid for my social security. [applause] -- whytion to you is don't you go along with right and spain and lucas and -- made a lot of great points. well -- [laughter] let me respond. go ahead, take the mic. that's fine. >> you were quoted as referring to tea party people as the drunken uncle at christmas -- >> what i was referring to were republican congressman tom a not tea party people. that was totally out of context. i would be happy -- look.

i am free with my opinions. that is the way i fly. but in terms of social security, medicare, i have paid into that my whole life, too. most people drawing on medicare draw out three times as much as they paid in. that is not their fault. that's just true. mo -- no politician likes to raise the medicare tax. most people will draw more benefits than they ever put in. social security, it depends on your income level. a lot of people put in more than they ever get back. the less successful usually it back more than they put in. that is just a math problem. it's not a moral problem. it's not a judgment problem.

people --ve some social security disability is by people andd just like we have people who abuse food stamps, we have people that abuse health care. we a big case coming to the floor. only cheated $70 million instead of the $270 million they are charging. give me a break. people earn the benefit. so, we have a lot of things like that that should be corrected. in terms of senator cruise, senator paul -- look, i know. i vote with them 95% of the time. house it isn the always interesting they are telling the house what to do. we are the majority.

we have got to get more republicans elected in the senate to help. fight first,ou go and let's say we did exactly what they suggest. i don't have any problem with that. do they really think they can get the votes? to get it to the president? no. it back to the house. the house will reject it, and then we shut down the government. at the end of the day -- let me finish my point and i will give you the chance to respond. first of all, i do not think it is smart for anybody to shut down the government. i do not think that is a good thing. i do not think not being american troops in the faulting on obligations and costing people their jobs is a good strategy. and i don't think it will work. nobody has ever shown a point in american history where it did work. -- like tom coburn

who was there in 1995 -- that is someone i will listen to and value. now i will give you a chance to respond. >> i said continue funding everything in the government except for obamacare. and you keep saying you don't want to defund the government. we are not seeing, they are not saying they want to shut the government down. they just want to shut down -- versatile, most of it can't be shut down that way. most of it is mandatory spending sorry.dicare. i'm that's just law. that's the way it works. we are talking about discretion in the government. most of this would not be impacted by that particular passage. second, the house of representatives -- our founders systemvery different

than the british. the house of commons is where all legislative decisions reside. representatives, when we pass something, we have to send it to the senate. we cannot send it right to the president. the senate has the option of rejecting it or amending it and sending it back. it is not accepted in sent on. to thell send it back house. it will never get to the president from desk. again, if these guys -- i don't having objection to what they are trying to do. obviously none of them were here to vote against obamacare. i'm glad they are here now. i wish they had been running in 2006 and 2008. when you put every vote against it and try to repeal it -- i do not feel that what myin terms of

commitment is to change it should be questioning. but i am not going to support something that absolutely will not work. i do not have any problem voting for the legislation you suggest. no problem at all. easy thing to do. to i also have an obligation tell you, it is not going to get past in the united states senate in my view. that is what many senators are saying. and it certainly will not get it will certainly not get past the presidential veto. wealthy're saying is, president and the democratic senators will give then. maybe you are right. it did not work that way the last time. >> [indiscernible] know, if we worked winning on other fronts, if we were not making changes in it --

but you know, you feel so strongly about something. you are going to put the air force out of work. i hope they understand. i am not going to pay troops in combat in afghanistan. i know they will understand. i know that they will be ok that their family is not getting a check. at they will be fine. know, the national weather they will tell folks without getting paid that a tornado is coming. if you want to risk that, you it is not like we have not been debating obamacare for four years. >> [indiscernible] well, do you want to give them a mic? well -- >> i'm suggesting that you

explain more about the mandatory part of obamacare that makes a big difference. -- i don't think a lot of people understand. i didn't until i thought about it. >> it's a tough thing. certain parts of the budget congress has to vote on every year or the money does not get paid. that is about 40% of the budget. it has to change the law to change the budget. you know, we don't vote money for social security. if you reach the age of eligibility, you take and the resident -- the requisite numbers, you get your check. congress does not make the changes on the cost-of-living index. they used to up until the 1970's. people in short

under obamacare will actually be insured by changing the rates of eligibility for medicaid. that is higher income will be eligible to use that program. so, you can cut down all the discretionary stuff. it does not change. in portions of it, those are in another part of the budget very that is complex here i'm trying to get through it. there is a relatively small portion of the budget here. it is 100% of what we spin on indian hospitals. it is 100% of the better and budget. of budget.eterans you want to shut it down on the chance the other guy will you in and restore it. think that is a good

idea. he would have been pretty upset if while he was going out working on airplanes somebody your out of work. that will hurt the country. i would be concerned by that. awill let this lady have chance. >> i am going to change the subject. i have some questions. you can save the first three and answer them later. when are we going to impeach obama? [applause]

fire holder? [applause] i would like to know, i have a son. law who ise a son in a border patrol agent. i have a son who is a city police officer. i have a son who is a highway patrolman here in oklahoma. my son-in-law on the southern ing theis experience sequester. they have had all their overtime. am not sure if you are everybody else knows is but what is going on down there is bad for them. if they arrest a bunch of guys coming over, which he says their traffic coming across the eagle pass, it

is three or four times more than they had a year ago because everybody knows we are talking about the immigration bill. he brought in five pakistanis the other day. that they areuns taking off people coming across the border. he has been there five years. , they doey told him not have air conditioning in their truck, if it break too is, and you know how hot it there. if you have a flat and you're in the desert, too bad. you better call one of your friends. out there in the wilderness. what is it going to come down to on these ranches? we are going to take you and your partner out, we are going to drop you off and we will

come back a hours later to pick you off. extremely dangerous. they all have a bounty on their heads with the cartels. >> absolutely. >> homeland security is buying up all these rounds of ammunition. campedand cannot -- he out at walmart on the day of the shipment so he can buy up whatever allotment he can get. thate not crazy people are going to revolt and all that stuff. we not that kind of people. those are some of my issues. i would like to talk to you later about my son. >> i will be delighted. i will hang around. they are great questions. lets talk about ammunition and work back. , it you arer exactly right. let's talk about what it is. sequester was of the deal negotiated in the last debt ceiling that said you are going

to cut long-term spending by the same amount you raised it, $2.1 trillion. it was immediately agreed to. the presidentwas suggestion. if you want to read about it "ere is a bob woodward book the price of politics." was a very lively exchange when the white house when it was released. the president said if congress does not do this, then we're going to have a cut that is so painful it will mostly fall on did then, things like this. it'll knock at the nondiscretionary side. that will will make us come to a deal. fall on thenot discretionary side of the budget. that will make us come to a deal. he is likely to get a third.

the amount of money involved is considerable. $85 billion. it is a $3.5 trillion budget. in yourannot find 2% budget you can do without laying people off and putting my people -- putting people like your son in danger, i think you could. we have some furloughs that should not have ever happened because of appropriations. but. is ons what the standoff the sequester. what the republicans have told the president is we will sit down and renegotiate where the cuts come from. we think some of these are really stupid. we are not going to give up the cuts and we are not going to raise taxes on the american people again. we're just not doing that. we did not do it last time. you did. that is what the standoff is right now.

be at thehis will heart of what happens from september to december as we approach the end of the school year. the president aim will to get rid of the questioner either by raising taxes or by just far winky money. republican aim will be to redistribute the cut away from these countries -- areas from the entire budget. that is the essence of that problem. your son knows far more than any of us in this room. on the upside, we have double the size of the border patrol while bush was president. we are talking about increasing his again. there is a lot more that needs to be done. there has to be internal enforcement in the united states. 40 or send came into the country legally, not like the people your son art doing -- dealing with. you have to hold higher people

accountable. a major debate going on. i suspect no matter what happens at the end of the day the border patrol is a bigger and stronger and more robust. it needs to be. , who the circumstances would blame them? it is dangerous. your you for what all sons do. that is all dangerous work. that is really tough going right now. more senators voted for the immigration bill, because they did not think it would work. i agree with him on that? in terms of holder, you know, we do not hire and fire the attorney general. he works for one guy. he has to be approved. i am sure a lot which they have

not approved 10 now but he only has to be approved one time. that is the president's -- approved him, but he only has to be approved one time. there is an extraordinarily high bar. only nixon resigned. no american has been removed from office, no matter how popular. there are high crimes and misdemeanors. if he got that voted out of the house, you have to have two thirds of the senate agree. think that is very likely to happen. the country would be riveted on this. there is pending legislation to do this. there's no committee that has

been tasked to do it. as a rule, and this can certainly happen in american. you are better off litigating this at the ballot box. i was remind my republican friends. .hey were pretty frustrated they did not like george bush very much. they sure hated losing to him in 2004, even more than 2000. they did not quit. they took the house and the senate in 2006. they never try to impeach george bush. think long and hard. always easier to say try it. usually that means we need to work harder at what we are

doing. i am old enough to watch barry goldwater go down in flames. took 16 years to get one old reagan -- to get ronald reagan. democracy is hard work. it is people going out and knocking on doors. is is people going out and voting. .ur system works it is hard to work in part because that is what the founders wanted to be. they are afraid of centralized power. they're going to make this very difficult to do. they're going to have this president for four years that selected this. there's no other system that is is as complex as ours to work and get things through. the founders but it was the best defense for liberty. out.large it has worked

i believe that madison came back he would be very happy. sometimes they do. different point of view are successful, they won the argument and they did it fair and square. they go back and go harder. >> let's go all the way back here. >> it was the attorney general under president bush? did he knowingly allow the mexican drug cartels? >> not to my knowledge. >> to have a question? >> why is anything being done? >> a lot is being done.

the attorney general has been held in contempt of congress. the bestell i'll will chance was to win the elections last election. is why we no caps happened right now. you to me -- what you doing in libya in the first place? bewas a dumb idea and will

there. it did change the rule of the game. they never came back to congress. they never came back and submitted a budget. can say what you want about iraq and afghanistan. and payad to come home for political. if we had a democratic house, i attorneyink the general would ever be held in contempt or do i do not think the federal a budget would have been cut. things are getting done and so far as we have the weapons to do

that? we do not have the executive ranch. we came close but not close enough. we have a great chance to get the senate . >> it is to give work in our communities. this is to go and make this a teller line terminal. when you and stella, you will bring us out of using the officer.

>> i do not know a lot about the atms. >> let me go back here. there you go. >> hi. , sorry.ou can you discuss your views on immigration reform? >> very skeptical. very opposed to the senate bill. way too much discretion by the administration. they decide when the border is secure. this is a recipe for disaster.

you have to have a piece of legislation. this will be comprehensive. for security first. do like the fact that he put extra technology and they add either by -- e-verify. that is why it was passed. two out of every three republican senators still voted no here there is: a lot of skepticism.

they overstayed. i am sorry they are not to do that. , no amnesty. by that i mean i do not know the senate bill is an amnesty bill. yet you know english. he had to go through a background check. you have to pay all your back -- you have to know english. you have to go through a background check. yet to pay all your back taxes and go to the end of the line. that is not amnesty.

we know this does not work. that is in general. i do not think you're going to sa see an immigration bill until you sort out some of these other things. if you do not have the debt ceiling dealt with, you're not going to get immigration reform ever. immigration takes a lot longer.

i think there is a real effort to do the bums rush the summer. that bill would be law. think twice before you take the goalie out of the game. annk we will pay such offense that will -- playsets could offense that we will never pay defense. that is not work on a foot goal -- football field very often. it doesn't work in politics. the only thing in the president be able to do. frank and -- dodd/frankrank

and stimulus. this is something i do not think the country can afford. i would like to say thank you for coming. more of these would be very helpful. first of all, i feel like you do. i am not for amnesty. i am sorry that the people to come here and overstayed their visas. i am not for having them citizenship. also on benghazi, i have two children serving in the military. i am so disappointed -- disappointe in obama. i believe he leading us on a socialist country path. ourink there are a lot of young people who do not understand that because they are not being taught taught that anymore in the schools.

, i do notghazi thing understand why it is taking for loans. if anyone had done something like this we would already be hung and buried. for obama and hillary to stand up in front of the parent of those young men and blamed this on some man in california, how in heavens name do they get away with it? if one of those have been one of my grandchildren or son, i would have been screaming at that man. they probably had to put me underground. for him to act like our be aary, he wants us to socialist country. i get sick of it every day. my husband told me i needed to take a rake. i see and hear so much. i have two children -- -- take

a break. i see and hear so much. i have two children fighting. we need to get rid of him. [applause] one quick thing i would like for you to answer. i do not know if any of you are aware or have seen these giveaway phones. >> outrages. >> we traveled 11 states. oklahoma is the worst one we have seen. my dealings are the more things we giveaway the more things these things the kids are going to sit back, my grandson has a tattoo, i know they do it. they choose not to get in surance. and we just ignore it. to keep giving away, and they're sitting there with their hand out. is makingn mexico

billions of dollars. how do you stop that? >> we start defunding it piece by piece. we do. will cut it. i am not a big fan of this program. i would be happy to get rid of it. your point about the culture about giving and giving and giving is exactly right. food stamps double under george bush. under theed again current administration. we go from $17 billion to 78 billion dollars only have a pretty be sent -- pretty decent set of legislation that would have started reforms. we're going to take another crack at it. we lost some votes because they did not think it went far enough. there may lost others because it

went too far. we have almost no democrats. we did not get it done. programs are open to abuse. it is not just the money. it is pretty bad. fromre taking money people who need it, which is worse. also that you are creating a culture where people think the government is responsible for everything. they do not have to do the things that every other generation has done. i cannot agree more. on benghazi, this is a situation where the political process to a degree has worked. i gave a speech on the floor about this. i said it is a really sad tale .f incompetence and cover-up we are complacent, because

let's be real, this is a pretty dangerous part of the world. you have to ask some hard questions. this pulled out of there. they shut their diplomatic mission. warned us that this is extraordinarily dangerous. they did not get to the secretary of state desk. i've no reason to believe that is a lie. they do not do it. i am not saying that they wanted this to happen. no one wanted this to happen. when you are responsible we do it. have fouroccurs only

dead americans and we are told it is a video is of a planned terrorist attack. we know it was planned. the people on the ground were telling us. there were not telling us about spontaneous riots. not think the administration has ever been honest with the american people will about what happened that night i ended up with four dead americans. of help inet a lot the senate. in the house we are pushing pretty hard. most of the testimony you have heard that have contradicted our .eople that we got to testify including the number two guy on the ground. i have to getg our folks credit for, one of the guys in the oversight committee was actually out with in days after this here. state department people were

told by the chief of staff "don't talk to them. go what do you mean? -- don't talk to them. co what do you mean? they are the oversight committee. to push this.ue when the president talks about we have had a summer of phony scandals, really? how is benghazi a phony scandal? how is the irs harassing people mostly on the right not a scandal? how is not tapping the phones not a scandal? those are all on his watch. those are all either his appointees are places where he has authority. cannot act like you are the absentee landlord. you are the chief of the executive ranch.

-- branch. we will keep pushing on these things as hard as we possibly can until people to account. sometimes it works. commissioner. irs there have been multiple changes in that department. i suspect there will be more. in the state department, the four people responsible have had to change positions. i do not think that is enough. i think they need to be gone. you have to keep the pressure relentlessly. there are so many targets of apple -- opportunity that paying attention to one of them is tough. it is not one thing or one mistake. it is multiple things, multiple policy disputes. we will be fighting them out each and every day. we will continue to do that. absolutely.

>> i do have a question for you. before i asked that question, i would like to respond. one of our fellow members of the lossnce seemed to be at a as to why we are not supporting obama care when people in new york and california are. am a former nursing home administrator. am a general manager for an assisted-living facility. i have been married to a nurse for 30 years. i have a dozen members of my family that worked in health care. i am originally from the west.trial midway there are only two insurance companies that are willing to assure this in the state of michigan.

and everything else that cost everything money that we needed to pass tort reform. is in the pocket of the american trial lawyers association. that is never going to happen. it did not happen. that is the answer to your question. that is why it has never been passed. the gentleman. i am going to go ahead and take

it a step further. i am going to put you on the spot. i know that you have served us well. to you before. my own son is a serving officer in the navy. i worked with a guy who son just .ame back from afghanistan i worked with another guy huge and not hear his -- from his son for six months because he was in special ops. it is a case where i can tell you that what we are concerned about is again and again whether , and i agree 100% with the outrage, it or whether metadata irs or this scandal, we do not seem to be hearing enough from the republican leadership, mainly the guy from my own home state. i will tell you why. i hear a lot of good arguments

football. i am ashamed of the kind of inaction that appears to be going on with our speaker john boehner. [applause] on bed like to put you spot. i'm just going to ask you flat out, would you support an effort to move john boehner and put in another speaker of the house that would the more in tuned with the concerns that a lot of us have? >> if you're talking about right now in the middle of a turn, no. additions can sign a and you can have an election. is every two we do years you elect. he won the election. he did not have a serious

action. you change it back in the middle of this game. i would not do it now. we will see who actually set up and offers themselves. i have been in a couple of this contest before. i'm not the winning side. this is where i was at. far as your point on football, we will not argue with you much, legislative there. went think is important to point out.

>> let me turn around. this is what this is supposed to be about. of theit is the middle day. it is 99 degrees outside. and appreciate the fact that you asked up and go and that you have a point of view. you serving democracy a little bit right here. thank you. let's go back. we have done this.

he'd have been very patient. we will get you next. -- you have been very patient. we will get you next. >> thank you for taking our questions. i have a comment and then a question. my first comment is why are we s,nning from terrorist shutting down our and the seas, when we are the most powerful on earth? we should not be running. my second question has to do with the financial markets. since the clinton administration banksff glass-steagall, and investment houses have been merging which caused the recession of 2008 and 2009. since that time, they have continued to merge. they now have a derivatives market that has the liability of more than all the money in the world. it is a major tightrope.

if anything goes wrong, it is not just the united states going down. it is the entire world. why hasn't glass-steagall been put back in to unravel this thing? -- the vocal rule is being read by people like jamie dimon. they're asking the fox to come into the henhouse to take dinner. how do we get this unraveled before we hear a sucking sound everything goes away. >> we are not running away.

these discussions are helpful. there has been more of them. we will continue to be pretty aggressive by going after the bad guys. in terms of the embassies, i think that is probably as much to warm people not to come and be there. not to worry about what happened in east africa. this has happened since we have been home. not want tothey do risk a situation where hundreds of will get killed. that is a call. i am sure it will be looked at when the get back. we are a lot more on offense here. that is why we have not had anything like a 9/11 again. i am not on financial services.

a lot to youris point. i do not want to stomp on president clinton. he signed it but everybody and congress voted for it. it was a republican proposal. i am not sure that both sides didn't get fooled on it. there is an effort to reinstituted in the senate right now. it is bipartisan. we have not seen it on the house side. what we had tried to do is go after fannie mae and freddie mac with major legislation moving to protect taxpayers from ever having been dragged into that thing again. theto gradually return mortgage markets to private hands and get the government out of that. your point about the expansion of bank is a worrisome one. i think it is a good one. i did not vote for dodd/frank.

i think it is pretty misconceived. it has heard a lot that community banks without doing anything to the big banks. if we have a bank failure in oklahoma, we know what to do with it. dic no such a handler. if you are talking about institutes the size you're, you are exactly right. it is not the answer. fullynot been implemented. we are looking at this. all i can tell you is that you will continue to see legislation coming out of the republican financial affairs committee. i have raised this point to some of the guys on that committee. they would not share the point of view that you describe. i think there is a

serious did eight over how much that contributed. i think it contributed a lot. thinking is one thing and derivatives are something else. insuring bank deposits is one thing. insuring derivatives bets and where the taxpayer got the loss, is quite something else. i do not think this debate is over. i would think we will be looking at it legislatively for a while. i do not have a definitive answer for you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> we continue with the conversation. this is a question from a constituent on gun rights and violence. >> a lot of scorecards in my life. usually they are drawn up to arrive at a predetermined answer. let me talk about my voting record. i have a 92% lifetime american

voting record. i have a 100% pro life to life voting record. -- pro-right to life voting record. to a taxr voted increase. that does not seem like a dangerous liberal to me. i think my record is pretty conservative. and a lot of times they picked opposednimum vote as to final passage. it may have a point they want to make. some scorecards have been mentioned today that represent the jumpers of pride -- john bird society. some are libertarian and do not care about the control. i do. i think that is consistent with conservatism. you cast several hundred vote in the course of the year,

someone is always allowed to pick one out and talk about it. that is fair game. toould be happy to respond anything particular. by and large, i have a pretty conservative voting record. a district still has more democrats than republicans. to make my case at the appropriate time. you have been very patient. i am paul from southwest oklahoma city. i have arty talk to you about the foreign aid. abouteady talked to you the foreign aid. how can congress consciously vote for bills that american people have to abide by it then exclude their sale? >> they generally don't. they should not have them. .e have it as a rule withis one of the changes

the contract with america. we are under the same rules. quite often i get these questions do you have to pay social security? i do. insurance?special no, i get what they get acting your air force base. will i have to go on the exchange? yes i will. those are fair questions. . wish i were not under it we are under it. congress actually put itself under obamacare and put it staff under there. that is pretty unfair to the staff. they are federal workers. we are put on it. we will have to go on to the. what the president said is basically you will have to go on the exchange that you are sticking -- still picking out of the federal health-care pot here

.hat was a decision he made it was done mostly because democrats to push the bill through did not want to live under it. they are the ones that have been besieging the president about changing the law. sir. glenn and i played football here together a longer time ago than an either of us are willing to admit. he is a great veteran. it is good to see you. fore also beat me out first-run bowl: we were in junior high. >> and then we played football. when we werebone in junior high. >> and then we played the all. >> all the things that have been set are very important. it is on the heart and minds of a lot of people.

i have something personal that i want to put to tom that i have talked to him about. that has yet to be paid as americans to a very important group of americans here in the united states. many people do not know about. that is to a group of world war that were promised veteran status after the war due to their service. then they were denied that veteran service until 1988. that is the world war ii merchant marines. my father who is a doctor here in the state of oklahoma was a the ss von stupen

and was bombed. he was denied veteran status until 1988. a special act of congress was their to let them have status. of course, by that time they were old enough to not get their g.i. bills. they did not have to get there did.ans at everybody else my dad borrowed $5,000 to go to college and become a dock jerk and help build -- to become a doctor and help build this great state. i am going to read a couple of things so you can be a little more educated on this. during26 marine others

world war ii died in the line of duty. a greater percentage of war related deaths other than u.s. services -- other than all the other u.s. services. they kept a secret during the war to keep the information about the success to the enemy. the newspapers say the same story every week. two allied ships sunk in the atlantic era in reality, the 33 sunkfor 1942 was every week. it was not until 1988 until they got that recognition. in 1942 just off brunswick, the

s s uncle -- as as oklahoma was ss oklahoma was sunk. it was an oil tanker. where was i? here. 19 merchant marine others were killed. four of them were burned beyond recognition. they have been since identified by private funds and now have a memorial to them. that is from people from our own state. we still do not have recognition from our own congress. 8300 marine others were killed at sea. 12,000 were wounded. 1100 died from the wounds. 6033 men and women were taken prisoner.

some were blown to death. some are drowned. some start. .6 -- some starved did 31 ships vanished without trace. the most dramatic of these at during that war -- acts during the war was in 1942 in the south atlantic. this trend spells when they refused to surrender. the ship was in flames and the the cadet from the u.s. merchant marine academy fired the last five

available shells, setting the sheeteer on fire. he was killed by shrapnel and 40 others went down with the ship. and you don't want to be disrespectful but you're going to have to make your point. >-- >> i do not want to be dishes but full but you're going to have to make your point. >> i am asking you to present a gold-medal to the survivors or the living u.s. merchant marine others, there are not many of them anymore, just like we have s andother veterans group to do it done as soon as possible. >> i do not have any problem doing something like that. whether we can get it done. you need almost every member of congress to deal with it.

your point is without question a great point. look. i had a dad who served 20 years in the air force. i had an uncle who did the debt march -- the death march in a prison yard. i read beer it be people who did those kind of things. revere theeer -- type of people who did those kind of things. let us get you a microphone. they are almost there. >> thank you. this dates back to the welfare thing. are people not required to work in order to receive welfare?

they were and were talking about all of this infrastructure and everything. my dad went out. a build bridges and western oklahoma. s.ey did road all dayout and worked long and we got food stamps and commodities. other things. then he got a little bit of money. why are we just giving a handout to these people will? -- to these people? >> i could not agree more. frank lucas when he is negotiating, he is from western oklahoma. 80% foodbill is about

stamps and nutrition programs. he put in a ton of reforms including one just like that. republican votes. some did not want to vote for. they wanted more reform. they voted no. we lost most of the democrats when we were doing that though the bill went down. he is trying to resurrect it now. i think you will come back with a very tough bill, probably even tougher it them when it went down in september. this is coming back again. it is much better to be getting a paycheck. people on the other and do not feel like they are suckers. these kind of requirements make sense. on food stamps, well over half of them are food stamps.

>> i understand that. >> what you are trying to do is what we are trying to pass in the house of representatives. this is the art of politics. you hate to lose people when you know they agree with you but they ain't it needs to go further. but they think it needs to go further. if you do not vote with us we lose your boat and we are losing all the democratic votes. we cannot get it rude. that is what frank is trying to do. i think you will see a pretty tough bill in the house floor in september. we will have to have three universal republican support. this is a state issue. this is an argument i do not disagree with. .his is a program as it exists next time,o better

let's do better next time. sometime this attitude i am not going to do anything unless i get everything does not work in real life. nobody ever gets everything they want all the time. sometimes you can say i can make rockers in the right direction. i can save money. -- progress in the right direction. i can save money. and build self-esteem, the work. >> i could not agree more. thank you. work our way forward here. then we will come over here. >> i think we need a select committee. we have multiple committees looking into.

why don't we get this gentleman right here. then i will come to the site. do not worry. i'll come back. >> when secretary clinton was for speaking out about that, she said it was reprehensible that this person made this video. that was the reason benghazi happens. what i find reprehensible is that we have a secretary of state does not realize we have freedom of speech in this country. if you choose to speak out against islam and making movie about it that is not illegal. we have freedom of -- because we have freedom of religion and speech.

to say she's going to go after that person, i find that reprehensible. she made a statement as secretary of state that it was going to be u.s. policy to support those countries that supported homosexual rights. i do not that should be the primary focus of our state department. the fact that they did not defended doma and allows benefit to go to gay marriages andoing to force oklahoma other states to give benefits to gay marriages. >> good issues. on benghazi, i certainly agree.

why mention the video anyway? we do not have proof it had anything to do with anything. as an effort to secure the truth. they got caught flat-footed and d as a consequence. the fact that this is still unfolding, the truth is still working its way to the surface. we know more now because people have hearings. they start telling the truth. esther and -- as far as the president not defending the laws, that has helped him multiple times. it is their obligation to defend

the law. -- that has happened multiple times. it is their obligation to defend the law. law, and you don't get to pick and choose which ones you want to. so i think we have seen a pattern of that kind of behavior. the house of representatives ended up paying for legal defense. we should not have had to do that. if the executive branch's, the department of justice's responsibility. in terms of oklahoma, the supreme court decision, effectively turned gay marriage now into a state issue. know, i don't know enough about the law to know where we're are headed on this, but it looks to me like it is going to be a state-by-state thing unless we get another supreme court ruling. i think what the supreme court is trying to do is to avoid

doing what i did in the abortion debates, that is having a one- size-fits-all, basically trying to kick it back to the states and let people and individual states do it. but it has made very clear that if a state decides to do it and you are a federal employee in that state, that you are obviously subject to the same benefits that everybody else are in the state. again, that was not a congressional action, that is supreme court action. but i think that is where we at -- are at. it will be devils state policy for the time being, but probably better than a sweeping decision where the supreme court decided they would do wherever he wanted to do instead of letting people in individual states make their own decisions. let me come over here, but we will get back there. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> frank murphy. thank you for could you hold it closer?

>> could you hold it closer? get drove 300 miles to here. we touched on amnesty. i lived in california until 1995. i was born in san diego. i was a police officer, a police and detective in san diego for a number of years. i was also a contractor. i had two other businesses, as a mechanic and as a machinist. i can tell you the problems that have killed california are headed right here, and somebody had better wake up. california was just like this place was in about 1970. right now, if you go to los angeles, four out of five babies being born are born to illegal aliens, and they do not pay a dime.

ratealifornia unemployment is indescribable. i don't want to see that happen here. i had beene because here in the army in the 1960's, and i know what a great state god ita is good i thank is here. i do not want to see it destroyed. amnesty, no work permits, get rid of every legal alien pushing back across the border. that is your enforcement. and cut unemployment to six weeks. i have had numerous jobs over my lifetime, and it never took me more than two weeks to become employed. when i moved to oklahoma, i went to the unemployment office your i asked for a job, not a handout. they did not know what to do. they were lost.

they could not believe it. finally, after an hour or two, i got to some guy that helped veterans. i am a veteran. and he got me a job. i was unemployed in oklahoma for two days. so somebody that tells me they cannot get work here -- it is a lame, lazy jerk. thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> that's ok. well, you are not going to be the first guy to slip out the door. but that is ok. that is ok, thank you, and thank you for your service. [inaudible] [laughter] we will do what we can, we can do some of it. we are trying to cut the unemployment links now. it needs to go back -- we pushed legislation through the house several times. long,it has been way too and so i think you're going to continue to see efforts to reduce that. i will tell you -- i think

whatever happens on immigration, border security is going to continue to be a top priority. theave actually doubled size of the border patrol. we are actually spending more money. not enough yet. not enough. but it is moving in the right direction. it is going to continue to do that. we have got a long way to go to address these problems. let me get around to everybody that has not had a chance. this gentleman here has been very patient. we will get you next, ok? >> there is an quite a bit said about the -- about what president obama said about the scandals -- y, yeah.y phone >> i know that you disapprove of what he said. i thought it was one of the most egregious things he has ever said. >> sorry, i had it upside down. [laughter]

do i need to say that all over again? >> well, that is ok. >> i wonder, did you and did the speaker, did you express your disapproval to him, and i'm not talking about an anti-chamber in -- anddle of the night editorial somewhere. i know you can watch an -- write an editorial in the "daily oklahoma." >> sundays. but about what yo> ? -- they verym seldom gets published in the "oklahoman," but within them around the areas that we represent. of andeen very critical got become a very critical of the irs, had voted repeatedly from everything from cutting

funded -- funding, people have been very supportive on these issues. attitudeso about his kind of tour, i also thought that it was downright terrible the way he said phony scandals. >> they are not phony when people have been harassed. and people die. that is not a phony scandal. >> those things can also affect the investigation because there are people on the conservative side in those investigations, and there are also people on his side in those investigations. it can really have a bad effect on his attitude. >> yeah, presidents need to be very careful about that what they say. i need to get this gentleman appear. teaching first grade with all your transcripts. as a congressman, is it possible for you to see the president's

transcripts? >> well, no, i do not think it is. life i have another question. -- >> i have another question. i assume the answer is no. quite as far as i know, i do not think we have any right dizziness transcripts. greg i think all of us have found many times that we would tax or aave a fair flat tax, and it seems to me to be the best opportunity to get rid of irs. is it ever announced or discussed in congress about fair -- or flat tax >> yes, absolutely, i actually sponsored a fair tax system. i would take the fair tax over the current system in a heartbeat. there is major tax reform legislation being discussed now between -- in the house ways and means committee. unfortunately, we do not have an oklahoman sitting on a city. -- on that committee. the senate is also trying to move something. our challenge will be to mike

and, you have a democratic senate and a democratic president. i think it is an opportunity to be for major tax reform. we have a tax system that is riddled with credits, loopholes, game playing. a friend of mine, kevin brady, is a member from texas that sits on a committee. the tax code of the united states is four times the size of a bible with none of the good news. pretty good summary. >> it is. in your opinion, if a presidential candidate made that a major point, would it carry any weight? >> yeah, i think it would. i think nobody ever thinks the tax system is fair. that is always an issue that resonates with america. let's be real -- taxes are one of the reasons we do put -- we declared our independence in the first place. we did not like the way was done, we thought we should have a direct say, which we did not.

. think it is a major effort i think you are going to see it more, particularly if commerce cannot act in the next couple of years and this divided situation. i suspect whoever is running for president will make it a major issue. the last time we had really important tax stuff, ronald reagan was president. he ran on what was back then camp ross, which was lowering the rates, and then he carried another part of it out in the tax reform act of 1986. it helps getting elected and reelected. i think it helped unlock the prosperity of the 1980 for the. so we need to change the tax system, and there are multiple ways. flat tax to me is the easiest. but fair tax -- again, it would be better than what we have got now for sure. yes, ma'am. >> thank you so much for coming. are antion is since we

energy state, i agree with all of the things you have talked about, but as an energy state, it seems like we are getting attacked on fossil fuels these days. and the coal industry is the first one that is going to go down. i feel like it is going to go to natural gas and so on until it is gone. the epa is obviously overreaching. what can we do? >> first of all, you are exactly right. i think there is almost been a war on carbon-based industry by this administration. coal has been the number one target. we have 250 years worth of coal supply. we export coal. coal, it is high quality, and we have a lot at her technology than we did 20 years ago. the idea that we are going to knock this american resource out of the mix is just crazy to me. and jobs. thousands and thousands of jobs. the house interior

procreation's budget, i said we cut epa's budget by 34%. we put some writers in there. writers are special legislation things that research what they can do. and some of the regulations they can propose. we will continue that. the chairman of the appropriations committee is from kentucky. bigger coal a much industry then kentucky. he has seen thousands of jobs lost in his dexter. it is not a very rich district. whole mining districts are not historically big, wealthy districts. you are destroying a core industry that is critical, some areas that have been challenged in our country for a long time. my biggest concern as an oklahoman is with natural gas and oil. look, i am all of the above energy. i am for all kinds of energy, i love wind power, i have no

problem with the wind tax credit, i think it is a good thing. in about 80% of the power this country comes from carbon- based industry. anybody that thinks we're going to be getting rid of it in anybody's lifetime here is just fooling themselves. natural gas is cleaner than any kind of carbon-based energy. we have got tons of it in this country. it has brought the rice down 40 dollars down to around four dollars per thousand cubic feet. we actually have a few huge and managed over a lot of our industrial competitors. again, these are industries that are productive, that are growing in output and that we ought to be fostering. so i voted for about every pro- energy piece of legislation you can find. will -- be contribution

controversial to some people -- that includes the export of natural gas or die would like somebody dependent on us for a change instead of us independent on some foreign country. i would like us to be a will to have that kind of leverage in a world affairs. i think that will continue development and investment here. i have been a big proponent of the keystone pipeline. i doubt we are going to disagree on energy. i think the most important energy debate coming forward may well be the debate over tax reform. advantage domestic exploration in the united states intangibleike drilling costs. extremely important because it encourages exploration here. we don't give those things to american companies that produce offshore, we will give it to you if you produce here. when the president talks about oil and gas getting subsidies, that is what he is talking about. by the way, is about the same tax break we give every

manufacturing company in america to manufacture here. why would we not give energy companies comparable tax for them to stay here? the district i'm privileged to represent is still one of the top 20 oil and gas to districts in the country. we are producing more natural gas than we ever have in history. there is a lot out there still define here in places we have been drilling for 100 years. again, i think it will be a big component in our future. it always amazes me -- the president likes to vilify the in history, lately i have noticed how he is talking about how we import less oil since he has been president than we did before. like, really? do you think you had any earthly thing to do with this? you that did not invent fracking , you deny then horizontal drilling. if you look at carbon base here, oil and gas on federal land, since the president has been president is down, like, 19%. drilling is down by about one third. that is 20% of the land of the

united states is owned by the federal government. we don't see too much of it here, but you get much west of here, utah and wyoming and places like that, the majority of those states are in the hands of the federal government. helpfult particularly in terms of developing that resource, which we get the royalties on that as taxpayers. that flows into the treasury. we ought to be doing as much private development on that land as we possibly can. >> [inaudible] >> i don't think it is going to be done. all, we need a president with a different attitude towards this industry. there are some things we can do in congress, and we have done to try to slow down, but when the president gets to a point, the chief regulars, never certain regulatory philosophy, they're going to make it different on -- difficult on coal. we had one of the president of the energy advisers saying yes,

there is a war on coal. i am not for a war on american energy. period. we are going to keep reducing. we ought to be investing, and we ale, and clean: -- in clean co technology. we have the largest reserves of it in the world. the idea that we would ever turn and walk away from it i think is just crazy. i think it weakens us. i don't think it strengthens us. yeah, go all the way back here. then we will come up and get you, ok? thank you. >> thank you. there is a law that went into effect in oklahoma that ,asically made oklahoma city called competitive bidding and access to durable medical the clement. -- equipment. you said you are going to be at medicare age soon. how far do you think you have to go to get medical equipment now in your district? >> oh, quite a ways.

>> there are 26 supplier second .upply the state of oklahoma there are three of those that are local. the average travel distance to find a week -- a wheelchair tomorrow is 752 miles. happened, and nobody is talking about it. the stores even go in there, they did not get a hundred, they went to florida, they went to to thethey went nationals, who don't do that stuff. we passed this law, a cayman, it it cameur district -- in, it is in your district from the very southern part of it all the way out to guthrie, which comes out of your district.

but i mean it just hit oklahoma july 1, if you need a wheelchair, you are going to have to travel, and then you're going to have to have a supplier -- >> is this a state or a -- >> a federal law. who is yourre.gov suppliers. in other words, this happened, the one gentleman said the california bit of this stuff and it was whatever else, there is for local suppliers that got a hundred. dash ofrest of the is a these are national. so the access to wheelchair, walkers, whatever else in your district has drastically changed. the law says that walmart got a contract, and they got to bring it to you and deliver it and teach you how to use it. if anybody believes that it's going to happen, i don't. [laughter]

good thing.m is a let me take this gentleman right here. >> on the sequestration, i think a lot of us are asking, we want more of this, more of that. i was really proud to take a job at the air force base. up until this year. and all of a sudden you're telling me that my time is not worth -- whatever we are doing out there must be completely wrong because you are not willing to pay us for it. >> no, i do not think that at all. my dad worked there 20 years, and my brother worked there. you finish your question, and i will respond, i am sorry. to get gasoline for their vehicles. we are calling united way so we can avoid to pay our bills. that ain't right. that is not treating us right.

talking lady back here about our border patrol, having to go out there with your own tires, that is what we are coming down to? sequestration, you are talking about cuts this year, what about the next year down the road? and that is not a solution for government. i mean, if we can't put 500 people together and come up with some type of a solution. you had to make this thing work out. it is not supposed to be a whole bunch of little kids up there saying this is mine, and no, everybody wants their spirit >> -- oncwants theirs. great point. the house of representatives responded twice to take care and it eliminates sequestration. the senate never up picked it up, the president never made a counter offer at all. they do not have to agree with how we wanted to stop it, which andto redistribute because nobody would have been furloughed.

this is 2.5% of the total federal budget, less. if you spread it over the entire federal budget, you would not see this. i think the president was not serious -- and this was his idea. this is an idea he proposed. he advocated for, he signed into law. solutions.to now, this year when the first announcement came, there would be 22 days of furlough. my colleagues and i worked hard and got a cut first 214 and then to 11. two weeks ago, i offered a commitment on the house floor. we have something you are working familiar -- capital fund. that is not appropriated dollars. there is no reason that 9500 workers being paid through that find, 1500 ad for steel, and 180,000 around the country, are being furloughed at all. that is the it ministration's decision. -- the administration's decision.

when i brought this up, i was told we think everybody should be saving the same amount. why would we furlough these people? come to a deal with the president, i have been there on making compromises with the president. i'm not one of these people that say no, i will never sit down. i have done it. but on this one, he is not offered a plan, he has not responded to hours, the senate has never passed anything. they have let this happen. and i think they have let it happen because they want to make a political point. and they think we can sign a bill that says we're going to save us money, and now we are just going to waive it. that is not going to happen. we were willing to sit down and redistribute these cuts over the entire budget. we have done it twice. --et through the house twice passed it through the house twice. when the president has a real plan to sit down, then we are happy. we would be happy. his campaign for about six weeks wading into this sequester, all over the country, he never bothered to call the seeker or

the majority leader or the minority leaders in the two houses, he brought them down the very last day before the sequester began for a photo app and a political -- a photo op and a political statement. that is not how you do these things. when the president wants to sit down, and i have talked to him personally, happy to sit down, happy to try to find a solution think it is the administration which has not acted responsibility. acted responsibly. again, their idea, no solution. we have offered a couple of solutions and are willing to sit down and negotiate other spirit when he wants to do it, then we will do it. i suspect we will do it this fall. but your other point, which is really important, is exactly right -- it is not a one-time deal. happens again next fiscal year if we do not get this fixed. so we need to sit down and do it. >> i would like to invite you out to tinker to talk to the people out there. >> sure, i would be happy to.

i've been out there multiple times. this is not good for some i have ever been to tinker air force base. you will find i've been pretty supportive not just to set the base but the workforce. that is an extraordinary workforce. you get 50-year-old plant in the air in combat condition. -- planes in the air in combat condition. that is really sophisticated skill. my dad worked there 20 years. my brother, after his air force career, worked there. i have a pretty good idea what goes on. we fight really hard for it. that is why i pushed the amendment, that is why i have been willing to compromise. i will be happy to stack up what i have tried to do to make sure this didn't happen versus what the president and the democrats in the senate have done. i will be happy to sack of what might republican colleagues in the house to have actually passed a bill. we will have the debate and see who is responsible for this. but this is the president, in my view, and the administration, i should say, broadly in the senate that has paid -- has played fast and loose.

it should have never happened. but i would be happy to visit. yes, sir. bill, hr2685, smart meters mandatory in the united states or have you feel about that? >> you know, i am not really familiar with that legislation. i would be happy to look at that. >> how do you feel about smart meters? >> i do not have a problem with them, but how you feel about your meters is up to you. >> this is a meter that can be controlled from a central location, they can turn your location -- your air -- turn your electricity on and off. there are people that are having health problems with them. i know personally of a man whose house was set on fire by a smart meter. there are a lot of problems, and nobody seems to be paying any attention to them. >> well, we would be happy to look into it. i have had a couple of other people mention it to me, but

again, i cannot tell you i know every bill, and i don't even know if that one was around when i was in congress. we will be happy to help anybody. nobody is for people having interruptions in power e peoplereason, let alon with medical things or situations were houses burned down. we will be happy to help. i want to make sure everybody has a chance to do at least one if we have missed anybody. >> on this workplace violence in fort hood. >> outrageous. >> i had a grand child that had just left there, fortunately, thank you, lord. how can i be a workplace violence? >> how to take four years to take a guy to trial who was guilty. >> and still receiving his pay. i don't understand that.

>> i don't either. we try to do this legislatively on this. it is difficult because then you are legislatively tampering with a court case, which you usually do not want the legislature to do. i went to funerals of one of those soldiers that was killed. one of their funerals was in norman heard one of those kids was from this district. the most heartbreaking funeral i have ever seen in my life. he had already done one deployment, they were getting ready to do another one, his fellow soldiers got up and talked about what a great, young soldier he was. his sister got up and read letters home and he had written home from basic training about how proud he was and that he had finally found his niche in life and what this meant to him to put on the uniform. it was just heartbreaking. and how this guy, you know, number one there is a lot of questions to answer as to why he wasn't killed out of the military -- kicked out of the military before. there were serious questions about his stability, about whether he was a sociopath.

they knew he was committed hitting with radical terrorists in yemen. he should've never been in a position in the first place. all i can tell you is i don't know the justice system. but it should not take four years to get this done. and the workplace violence denies those soldiers the benefits that they should get, their families should get, and the recognition. this is not workplace violence. this is an act of terrorism, an act of war against the united states of america, and it is a traitorous act by a person that was supposedly in our service. the guy that is on top of this the most, whose district this took place in, is a former texas judge named john -- named john carter. ofupported every piece legislation that he is that, and we will continue to try and work, but this is a totally unjust situation. outrageous. >> my husband is retired air force, and he was mentioning the

other day, he said i do not understand why they allow him to keep his beard, first of all, being in the military, and proclaimed the thing he is going for -- going through. personally, i think it is obama's fault. [laughter] >> everything is his fault. >> let's get this human right here. >> if the employer mandate on delusional, and is a violet, and if it did, -- and it didn't violate, and if they did -- >> i don't think it is. i had a pretty serious exchange, if we had passed through the house, we do not think he could do it on his own. we are happy to delay it. and only passed one to do the -- i got in a

discussion, he assigning to give reasonable authority. i do not think so. this was a major component, and i think on the grants ought to approve it, and congress would approve it, but it would also throw in the individual mandate. from my view, and i am not an attorney, but i think it is the executive usurping legislative authority. i do not think there is anything in the law. portions given certain administered of latitude, but to me this is way beyond that. you and i probably agree on that issue. >> and the other one with eric holder given a contempt of congress. if anybody is content in any civil court, there will be consequences. what does that actually mean that he is in contempt of congress? takell, congress has to them to court. we are in litigation now. i can't tell you -- i will find out and get back to you what the precise penalties would be.

i just honestly don't know. >> and a third 1 -- can you put a got -- a gag on john mccain and lindsey graham? [laughter] [applause] -- you know, it is the united states of america, so i i did notan't do it, spend five years in a vietnamese prison camp, and i respect anybody that did. i did not say i agree with him all the time, but i have great respect for that. and lindsey graham has won the uniform of the united states, and i respect that too. we don't always agree, but, you know, i don't question their patriotism, we just don't always agree. yes, ma'am. let's get you a microphone row quick -- real quick. youram not actually from district. >> that is ok, you are an american, you are allowed.

a townve never been to meeting before. i have always voted republican. [inaudible] percent you described as donated to republicans. i'm having a hard time recognizing the party that i have voted for my entire life. is reallysue that bothering me is the immigration issue. and what i am hearing that is going on behind the scenes is it thatl cooked in the books, you all are supporting this issue that is being pushed by , and that itrove is going to be done. figuringaving trouble out if i'm going to show up to vote in 2014. and the problem that i have is that you all have passed legislation to solve the problems with the border, and it is not being done. you have had legislation with e-

verify, and it has not been done. you have mentioned many times not the administration does follow through on things. why would you even consider passing other legislation which they will have an equal opportunity not to follow through on? conferenceu go to with the senate, will he pass something and go to conference and also what about the discharges? >> can i answer the question? first of all, both of our senators voted no. again, i do not know if you are from the state or whatever, but nobody in this state has voted for that. and two thirds, over two thirds of the republican senators voted no. on the immigration bill. the bill that passed have not even gotten a hearing in committee let alone a vote on the floor. and it won't. it is not going to pass the house of representatives. what the speaker has said, we're going to work on our own bill, and it will be very different than the senate bill. and it may not pass.

so we are a long way away a man because this or that group says this or that, i would just follow the debate and see what happens, but i think it is pretty unlikely that what you saw coming out of the senate is going to be anything remotely like that is going to come out of the house. you can't go to conference and silly pass a bill. we have not even pass a bill yet. fromnk we are months away even dealing with this. i think these other issues, the end of the fiscal year, the debt ceiling, these things are way ahead of. i don't think anybody think the immigration system is working. you have to decide whether doing nothing is better than doing something. au know, if something is senate bill, i would say doing nothing is better. but you have to wait and let the legislative ross is work out. and for people that are all haveked about this, we

actually increased border security, but it is nowhere near enough. we have never enacted e-verify through both houses. to the senate's credit, they actually have it in their bill. i do not think it is enough, but they actually tested to move further in their bill that it -- than it has ever move legislatively. let's wait and see what we do. concern is the senate bill, it is not going anywhere. >> i realize that. i'm concerned about other things. but sinceair enough, we have not enacted a bill and have not voted on the bill yet, and haven't voted most will times in the majority and in the funding,to increase increased security, this idea that somehow the republicans are responsible -- look, a lot of what has happened is we did not

win the last two presidential elections, and we do not run the senate. not participating at the polls, if that is your point, won't help. guysd a lot of good elected in 2010 that have stopped a lot of bad stuff. and have cut the deficit in half, and our every -- and are every bit as tough on american security border or internationals as everybody else. you are to elect more of them. again, nobody in the state has voted for the things that you were talking about. and all of us have fought repeatedly against those things. and i suspect we will continue to. you know, tom coburn, who had an opportunity, you should listen to this statement on border security. pretty tough stuff. he will tell you this border is not 50% secure. that one your own cbo study says that if you did all this stuff in this bill, you would cut illegal immigration by one third to one half, does anybody think that is good enough?

i don't spirit i don't think so at all. so again, understand the concern, but so far that bill is a move anywhere, and as written it certainly is not. before anything does move, we will end up having town halls again, and people will know about it. all the way in the back there. >> good to see you again, counselor. my question is this -- what does the majority in the house doing theuarantee or preserve freedom of our military chaplains to express their faith and share it with the soldiers, military personnel? >> quite a bit. we have legislation on a moving. tim walberg, who is an ordained minister, and i cosponsored the legislation.

we're trying to do everything that we possibly can on that. and we passed legislation. i'm trying to remember in the last couple of weeks on this issue, through the house, so we will continue -- and i do not consider this a particularly partisan issue. you actually get a fair number of democrats that feel strongly about this too. but the idea that we would have chaplains who are atheists -- pretty terrible. the idea that you would tell a person of enough conscious to be a minister or a priest or a rabbi what they are going to say -- i don't think so. cases whereof those their allegiance really is to a higher power and they have committed their lives and their values and they ought to have the right to exercise that even in uniform. any minute women in your form certainly ought to have the rights to pray or friendly not to as they choose. that is their right, they are defending our rights to that.

we certainly need to make sure that there's are protected. i think you'll find unanimity on this, on our side of the aisle. again, a fair number of democratic supporters. anything else? i'm not soliciting. you only said there for three hours. >> because you sat there for three hours. [laughter] it is not my but, it is my knees, man. [laughter] they get old. i know you and i need to visit, but if anybody else have anything both in case, we have got staff people here that would be delighted to help you help your to get some they personally want to visit with me about, i am more than happy to do. yes, ma'am, last question. >> [inaudible] the young people that answer the phones [inaudible]

>> well, that is what they're supposed to do your a lot of those -- to do. a lot of those kids in a dcr interns. there are student, they are there for three-month or so. we go through what the calls are. and what they are concerned about. it really is helpful. what is the old will rogers saying? everybody is -- but only about different things. when you are in congress, you will find a way things are ignorant about cause you are voting on it. there is always the money in my knows more about anything that i do. if we can have the chance to open their opinion and get educated, it is very helpful. with that -- >> [inaudible] to thebut i want to talk lady first. again, i will be there. i can say, all right, you are the man. if you want to wait here, again, we will be here. we do not have anything after. oh, my knees. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> we will be taking you to another town hall meeting in just a minute. first, a bit about the analyst leaked documents. he may be getting a visit from his father. lawn snowden has then issued a snowden has been issued a russian visa. snowden's father talked on abc's "this week." >> as a father, i want my son to come home if i believe the justice system that we should be afforded as americans is going to be applied correctly. at this point, when you consider many of the statements made by our leaders, leaders in congress, they are absolutely irresponsible and inconsistent with our system of justice. they have poisoned the well, so to speak, in terms of the potential joy -- jury pool. where my son chooses to live the rest of his life is going to be his decision, but i would like at some point in time for him to

be able to come back to the u.s. , whether he is going to live the rest of his life you're not, and face it. because i believe the truth will shine through. it is clear that the american people, regardless of what law that been passed by congress -- law -- he broke the >> george, that is irresponsible to suggest before a trial that somebody has broken the law. what is done may well be protected by the first amendment. the president himself has admitted there might be something irregular what he said was mr. snowden should have gone to the congressional oversight committee. the congressional oversight committee has artie gone on record, dianne feinstein, guilty of treason. these are the committees that new for seven years and refused to disclose it to the american people. statements. if the american people knew what was going on, they would be's don, and edward snowden is supposed to go to them? implausible. >> i want to add to this. the president made a statement

laws thatresident had protected contractors like my son, edward. that is absolutely untrue. either the president is being misled by his advisors, or he is intentionally misleading the american -- >> -- >> absolutely not. and maybe at some point we should go through that, hypothetically let's imagine that edwards noted that well, there is a problem, let's say he got on an airline in honolulu fly tochose tool washington, d.c., and he actually gets an audience with peter king or dianne diane feinstein, how do we think that he would be received if he had a private audience? we have seen how they reacted even when the truth comes out. it's been the truth, they try to hide it from the american people, we would have never known the truth. >> that was edward snowden's father, lon, appearing on abc's

"this week." you can listen on your radio or online at c-span.org/c- spanradio. 6:30 p.m. tonight eastern time, we will take you to the family leaders that -- leadership summit in ames, iowa where rick santorum talked about the lyrical process and the republican party moving forward. again, that is tonight, 6:30 p.m. eastern time. >> mayor adrian fenty and council chairman vincent gray faced each other in one of the most contentious and expensive elections in d.c. recent history. fenty raised nearly $5 million. vincent gray only raised $1.2 million. but he won the public over as an affable and effective chairman.

he beat fenty. shortly after gray took office in 2011, brown, who had also run for mayor, told the "washington post" that he was paid and offered a job in exchange for disparaging information about fenty during the election. federal investigators soon discovered that much of brown's story was true. they also uncovered david even bigger secret -- the shadow campaign. basically you had a campaign that was going on, the regular campaign you see, and then you had another set of folks who were in an office right next to the gray campaign. during the campaign, there is so much going on, you had several workers actually complaining, several official workers complaining about the other workers because they felt that they were getting paid more, and there was a lot of confusion as to who was paying them, etc. it was not until a year later that folks started putting things together when federal investigators began asking questions, and they realize wait a minute, the folks who were next door, we cannot find any record of them in the campaign-

finance records that we see. so how did those folks get paid, and who was in charge of them? >> nikita stewart looks at corruption in d.c. city at 8:00 on c-ht span's "q&a." >> heading out to another town hall meeting now, this one happened in pawtucket, rhode island, with democratic senator sheldon whitehouse. he met with constituents over dinner. this is about one hour. [applause] >> all right now. this is my -- go ahead and have a seat, guys. this is the 115th, by our count, community dinner that i have held since i first start running for the senate back now, what, seven years ago. we do them steadily. we have kind of got routine down. everybody gets something to eat. i speak very briefly and then it

is just a discussion. if you a question, if you have a comment, this is rhode island, we even accept rude remarks. the whole package. please put your hand up and give us a chance to get the microphone to you. who is running the microphones here? the hand mics. all right. these gentlemen will get the hand mics around. one other thing that i'll say is i know everybody doesn't love public speaking. and whether it is because you don't love public speaking or whether it is because what you want to talk about is more personal than that, or whether we simply run out of time, if for some reason we don't get to you, don't worry about it.

one of my rules for these community dinners is that i try to be the last person to leave. so i'll stick around and if you want to talk about something that you don't want to talk about in front of everybody, that's fine too. thank you all very much. obviously this is a challenging time to be in washington. the economic recovery is still very slow and it is particularly slow here in rhode island. and we're trying to do things to get the economy moving more quickly, but we're trying to do so in a time when there is enormous conflict. and dissension in washington. and the one thing that i want to tell you about that, because it is my job to report back to you on what i see, and what's going on around me, is that what i see is not actually a lot of conflict between republicans and democrats. what i see is immense conflict, bitter conflict within the republican party.

you have a tea party contingent that has one set of views. you have more moderate republicans who have a different set of views. they are really almost at each other's throats now. you have flat-out conflict on the floor of the senate between republicans. you have fights within the caucus. among republicans. you have one group raising money against the other group and it is really very, very contentious. we're kind of bystanders to that fight, but we experience the effects of it, because when one party is that divided and there is that much anger and conflict, it is very hard for them to help with getting legislation passed. so we have had had our troubles there, but we are pushing very, very hard. senator reed and i had dinner several months ago with

president obama and there were 12 of us around the table and the president was talking about many of the difficulties. he pointed out one area where he thinks the republicans are willing to work with us and that is on infrastructure. that is an important opening. because if we can get that done, that is a big deal. there are so many roads that need work in rhode island. there are so many bridges that are past their appropriate life or need repair and maintenance. there is so much water work that needs to be done, both sewage and clean water piping that needs to be done. nationally, we have $600 billion worth of just water work that we could be doing. we have got $6 billion of it done in the stimulus. 1%. there is a lot more. we need to do it sooner or later. the stuff is in fact old and need to be replaced. it will help rhode island more than other states because we have been around a while.

we have a lot of old infrastructure. we need the jobs. we need to get after that. i think that is an important window and i'm working very hard with my colleagues to try to find a way to get a good infrastructure bill through the senate. we got a water infrastructure bill through and we need to get some ones for roads and bridges. the last thing i'll mention is healthcare. we are closing on being able to stand up the insurance exchanges that were in the affordable care act. that should be a really good deal for everybody. where they come up, we have seen prices come down and it is for the very obvious reason, that if you have an insurance exchange. it is like a market. you can go there and you can find what's for sale, what the price is and you can match things side by side, because they have to match in order to qualify. so you can know what you're dealing with. and you can find out, ok, which

gives the best price and that makes the insurance companies have to compete on price. most of the time, when what insurance companies do is compete on trying to get the business of a really big business. if you're a big business you get really good rates for your employees. if you're a small business, maybe not so much. if you're on your own, and trying to buy insurance, you pay through the nose. this brings everybody together. so you don't have to be a big business to get a good price. the market will work and we hope it will bring prices down. i'm very pleased with the terrific job that elizabeth roberts has done moving us forward on that. so there are a lot issues i know that interest you. we can talk about any and all of them. i just wanted to open with those two and if anybody wants to lead off with a question or a comment, i will gladly do that and as we do that, let me find ian lang who is here. ian, where are you?

right in the light. ian is working, actually at the health exchange. and that has now been stood up and if there are any specific questions, i just wanted to make sure that we had ian here, because with that coming on very soon, he is there to answer all sorts of technical questions and try to help. i wanted to recognize ian as well. thank you, ian. thank you for the great job you guys are all doing. >> my name is ken. i'm a retired fire captain and i have worked for the senator since he first ran and you have always made me proud, and i told you that. it is unfortunate, that if i was in a union and i ran for president and you defeated me,

what i would do, in america, or the school council, if you become president, i am going to back you. it is my union. what can i do to help you? but we seem to have a thing here, that i lost. we're all americans. however, i'm going to get up every morning and think what i can possibly do to destroy the winner. what can i do to prevent jobs to make him look bad? say no to the infrastructure. what can i do to make more people unemployed so -- this is the united states. that is not the way things are supposed to work. the representative of the house, boehner, the head of the house says we're not here to pass laws, because laws help people. he says we're here to repeal laws. unfortunately he has done lousy at that job too, because in five years, he hasn't repealed any

laws. so all i'm asking you, senator, and i spoke to you a little earlier, is only thing i'm asking for you is because everything you have done so far is do not give in to the debt ceiling terrorism. i call it terrorism because that is absolutely ridiculous. i guess i was talking -- gabby gobble at the times, i don't know why they publish him. for the last 13 years he has been wrong on everything. he finally got one right two days ago. he had a picture of the elephant the republican with a gun over its head. over its head, it said debt ceiling. i said get me a glass of water. i'm going to pass out. i said gary gobble said something about the republican party. that's all i'm asking you is to stand strong and thank you. >> i can promise you that i will. [applause]

i can also promise you that a lot of republicans will stand with me. this is another one of those issues where it is not all the republicans together wanting to do this. there is a group of extremists who are making this threat. and many republicans disagree with them. i -- know a senator from north carolina. his name is richard burr. he is a republican. he is as conservative as you can imagine. but he is also a responsible person. he was asked about this idea of voting against the debt limit and crashing the credit of the united states of america as the threat for the repeal of obamacare, which nobody actually wants. they can't win on a vote, so

they want to have -- operate like you would like take a hostage. and what richard said, he was actually overseas visiting the troops. they put a microphone in front of his face. he said that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard. so when a conservative republican is saying that is the dumbest idea i've ever heard, i think it is pretty safe that not only will i stand up, but so will many of them. that's very important. thanks, ken. yes, sir? >> thanks, senator. my name is ryan from west greenwich. i'm a small businessman. >> congratulations on your son. >> thank you. we have a family also. when we don't have money anymore to operate our business, to pay additional people, to pay for things of this sort, we have to let people go, to avoid bankruptcy.

we stop spending money. whatever it is, we just stop spending money. the u.s. government right now isn't stopping. they are increasing debts. they are doing stimulus. yes, it helps some people, but it is also costing him and his future everything. they won't be able to afford this. his children won't be able to afford it. i don't like the future that my children and my grandchildren will incur. >> that is a very fair comment. let me make two points about that. because it is a really good point. if that was all that was going on, you'd want to say yeah, we got to get the debt down and we have got to get the deficit down. the deficit is already coming down because of the economic recovery. we have to do it more on the long-term debt, we have to get down also. there are two considerations

about this that i think are important to that discussion. one is we're still in a recession. we're still recovering. and if you look over in europe, they tried to basically cut their way out of the recession. and followed the so-called austerity principles. and what happened is that their economies actually got worse. and our g.d.p., our gross domestic product isn't climbing much, but it is climbing by 1% to 2%. theirs are actually falling. our unemployment is higher than it should be, but it is single digits and even in rhode island it is around 9%. just under 9%. in a lot of those countries, greece, italy, portugal, it is

17%. it is 27%. so there are -- when the economy goes bad, families spend less. businesses spend less. municipalities spend less. states spend less. that contracts the economy further. the federal government's job, i think in that time is to counterbalance that by spending to offset it. i think our economic results are better. now that's a short-term thing. as soon it is an economy begins to take hold, you need to be ready to dial that back, but you do have to get through the down period continuing to spend. i think if we had followed the republican prescription of all of those cuts that they wanted in the middle of the recession, we would look a lot more like than we do -- portugal than we do now, economically. we would be in real dire straits. the second point is if you look at the big issue that crushes the deficit, is healthcare. everybody agrees on that. paul ryan, who is probably the most conservative budget cutter in washington says if you're

going to be honest about the deficit, it is really healthcare and president obama, another side of the equation said if you're going to be honest about the debt, it is really healthcare. so if you want to get after this, you really have got to get after healthcare. and to me, the issue in healthcare is that we have to make it way more efficient. and we can. we really can. we espn 18% of our gross domestic product, 18% on healthcare. in europe it is about 11% on average. why are we spending more than half as much than they do in europe when in europe it is free health care for everybody and here we have people left uninsured? we have all of these problems in our healthcare system. it is very, very unfortunate. the national institutes of medicine say that you can save $750 billion every year in healthcare expense. nearly half of that comes back to the federal government to, the taxpayer, through v.a.

benefits, medicare, medicaid, all of that. to me, that's where we need to look. how do you bring that number, right now we spend $2.2 trillion on healthcare. how do you bring that number under $2 trillion? if you could? then all of that savings goes into the federal budget. that's the big issue on a going- forward basis. and the battle that we have in washington is that there is one group of people that says we have all of this healthcare expense. let's cut medicare and medicaid and not solve the underlying problem. i think we have to solve the underlying problem. frankly i've been beating pretty hard on the obama administration to be more responsible and accountable about trying to get down that road further. i'll close by saying we are

actually good at this in rhode island. people like to knock rhode island, but this is an area where we are doing really cool things. go to any intensive care unit in rhode island, your likelihood of getting an infection from needles going in and all of that, people always get infections in the hospital, in an intensive care unit because of a program they kicked off on intensive care units, your likelihood of getting a hospital infection is now about zero. they simply don't happen any longer because they have put the procedures in place to prevent it. does that save money? millions of dollars because you're not having to treat the infection, not to mention that people die of them. there is a huge human cost as well. we're paying doctors more to keep you well instead of just how many procedures they can give to you. that is changing way they do business. coastal medical. the doctor in charge of it is steering them in a whole new direction.

their patients love it. they are open more hours. you get more support as a patient to keep yourself healthy. there is less -- who likes having medical procedures done to them, really? if you stay healthy, you don't have much of that. it is happening in rhode island. you can see the future happening and rhode island is leading the way. i agree with you. i think we have to hold off a little bit because we want to make sure the economy is back before we start to draw federal money out of the economy. it has to be a time that private money is coming back in. we have to keep our eye on the ball. healthcare. it is the big dollar item. if we do that, we can get back to very sensible levels of debt quickly. but you're right to be concerned. i appreciate that you raised that. i promise not to give such long answers in the future. that is a really interesting question. sorry about that.

yes, sir? >> i know you -- \[inaudible] >> grab a microphone so everybody can hear. >> do you support elizabeth warren or universal healthcare? something like that, like vermont? if not, why so? do you support universal healthcare in rhode island? >> i think it would be a good idea, and i think it would be a lot more efficient and i think it would be a lot fairer. practically, how do you get there? that is a bit of a problem. i actually wrote along with sherrod brown, the senator from ohio, the two of us wrote in the affordable care act what we call the public option. so people that didn't want to have a public program, they didn't have to, but there was a public option that was available. now we could not get the votes for it and so it failed. i felt strongly enough about it with sherrod, the two of us sat down and wrote that bill together and i still believe in a public option. you mentioned vermont.

there is a waiver in the affordable care act that if a state wants to go to single payer, they can do that. vermont is starting to decide whether they want to go to a statewide single payer system. my guess is if vermont does that and you find the cost come down 25% to 30%, that will be pretty interesting to a lot of other states and people will start saying we ought to think about that. that actually seems to be working pretty well. >> thanks for your response. >> yeah, absolutely. yes, sir? blue shirt. >> hi, senator. steve. >> hey, steve. >> a couple of questions on healthcare. >> yes. >> one with the website that has been set up. the portal. >> yeah. >> i want to know how secure my

data will be when i and others go to enter our data come october 1, if the feds have confirmed security on their end? >> i believe that it is secure. i don't know the details of how they secure it. if you look at the information exchange that rhode island has running, in the insurance exchange, there will be some information, but not a lot, because you basically, the product goes up and you decide if you want it and you go. where the data is much more personal is in n the information exchange. the information exchange is the thing where let's say you got an m.r.i. or you have to go to the lab and get a blood test, the information exchange allows the lab that did the blood test to basically post it directly on to

your own private electronic health record. so your doctors can see it right away and know what's going on with you and it simplifies things and speeds up the time, but that is really personal info. i've been watching that for years and they have that covered very tightly for leaks. it is a priority that it needs to be secure. >> right. i'm wondering who'll have access to my data once i input it into the system. >> on the information exchange, you select who has access to your data. and you can select by naming doctors and you can select by saying any doctor who is treating me or i think you can even select wide open and anybody can see it. it is your choice. you select when you come into the current care program. >> ok. as far as penalties go, who is in charge of assessing -- well, we have already assessed the

penalties, at least for 2014. who is going to collect those penalties? >> there is a -- statute that requires releases of public information to be disclosed. and once they are disclosed, there is both a private cause of action where you can go to court and say hey, wait a minute, you released my information and the regulatory agency over the -- whatever it is, if it is the telephone company or hospital, whoever is regulating them has authority to sanction them for having released the information in unauthorized fashion. >> ok. but i'm talking about if i choose or if somebody chooses not to sign up for healthcare, there is a penalty, i believe, the first year it is $95 or 1% of your income. >> i think the i.r.s. collects that.

>> i.r.s.? the i.r.s.? >> yeah. they are the ones who do the collecting. >> that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. >> no, the tax agency normally doesn't make you feel very warm and fuzzy. >> so they are going to get access to my data because obviously they are going to come collecting the money. >> they don't need access to your data to collect the money. >> ok. well, i guess they will find me somehow. \[laughter] and i had one final question on healthcare. oh, i notice that illegal aliens do not have to participate in this program. can they participate in this program? >> that's a good question. i don't know off the top of my head. i think at the moment the answer is no.

because if you are an alien who is here in undocumented or illegal fashion, you're not entitled to any federal health benefits, so you would not be entitled to the benefit of the payment that you get to make the insurance affordable under this plan. >> right. >> when that changes, if we pass immigration reform, and at what point people who are on the path to citizenship, can start to claim that benefit, is at this point not certain, because the house hasn't passed a bill yet. >> sure. >> but it could happen after that passes, there is a point at which undocumented folks get the chance to come in. >> finally, when do the federal subsidies end? subsidies for healthcare? i know they start in 2014, right? >> they are intended to be continuing. >> ok. and that is taxpayer money that foots the bill for that? >> ultimately, yeah.

>> thank you. >> you're very welcome. thanks for your questions and thanks for coming out. who else have we got? i'm looking. grab a microphone. >> i didn't come in from the beginning so if you have answered this question, just ignore it. the role of states in the setting of interest rates. >> yes. >>how that was overturned -- was the case -- until a certain point that it no longer became the case. >> yes. >> if i understand, you have co- sponsored legislation with elizabeth warren that would -- >> reverse that. >> if that is case, if you could elaborate on the status of those attempts. >> no, i would be happy to. this is obviously not something that makes me very popular with

the big banks. but many of you will remember a time when if a bank or somebody else charged interest rates that were too high, it was called usury. and it was actually an offense. and it was a matter, to refer to the police. and rhode island actually had laws, among other states that limited the amount of interest that banks could charge, which is a long, long, long, long tradition. back to the bible days where there were limitations. back to the early codes of -- and both religious and legal codes of justice. there has always been this ability to put a limit on the amount that folks could charge, and in america, it was always a state decision. and so there would be a state law that said 12% is the max. 17% is the max.

whatever it is. you could decide. so about 40 years ago now, a bank sued and said look, i've got -- i'm in nebraska. and this customer is in minnesota. and i need to straighten out whose law is it my nebraska law or is it their minnesota law? so the supreme court said no, you're the bank. it is your nebraska law. we're going to decide it that way. no big deal, it seemed. but then the banks got smart and they did a little thinking about that and they said hey, wait a minute, if it is the state where i'm incorporated that sets the law, maybe we can find some states that will get rid of all of their banking consumer

protection laws for us. and then we can move there and set up shop. so -- bingo. delaware did it and north dakota did it. do you ever wonder why your credit card is from north dakota? why would they be in north dakota? because in north dakota they got rid of so many of their consumer protections. so now if rhode island passed an interest cap, it would not make a darn bit of difference because of that ruling and because the bank just has to move to north dakota and then they could charge whatever the heck they please. that's how you get interest rates of 30%. who here has had a credit card that hit 30% interest? it happens. you fall into a trap.

you miss a payment. something goes wrong and suddenly that credit card of yours, boom, up goes the interest rate. 20%, 30%. in the day, that would have been illegal in rhode island. we had a usury law. so what i proposed is a law that would say no. it is the law of the consumer. so if you want to live in a state where you get consumer protection and you get low interest rates, that's your choice. if that limits the amount of banks that will come and do business in that state, that is your choice too. it is based on the person, not the bank, because they have gained that system in order to take advantage of it. so we actually got a vote on it, i think i got 38 other senators to vote with me. not even all the democrats. the banks are pretty powerful. so when i resubmitted it, refiled it this year, elizabeth warren decided that she would join it, as you said. so elizabeth is my co-sponsor and we're going to keep at it.

one of the things about congress, just because you have an idea that you think is a good idea, you don't get it pass right away. you have to sometimes be patient, wait for the right moment, wait for the right season, wait for the right congress and then you can make your move. so i'm going to keep steadily at that, and with any luck, sir, the time will come when we get it done and we can get rid of these abusive, unjustifiable 30%-plus interest rates and we can have control in the different states of how much consumer protection our people get. i think that is the right way to go. and by the way, all the republicans who talk about states' rights, here would be a good chance to show what state'' rights federalists they really are. but so far we're not getting a lot of traction yet. thank you. \[applause]

yes? >> i'm miles parker. we have a long way to go on wall street reform. >> we sure do. >> a long way. we have some transparency in the market and in these interactions we still have a very unstable environment. what's happening? >> well, we got a pretty good distance with dodd frank, the bank reform bill. on some of the big issues like separating investment banks from regular checking account main street banks, we could not actually get the glass steagall it was called, the law restored that separated them. but what we did get was -- to build it at the regulatory level and try to separate those functions. now they have had years to do

it. they have been harassed constantly by the big banks. they have made varying degrees of progress and in some cases we gave them some authority and they didn't use it all or they didn't use as much as we would like so i think we need to begin revisiting those questions. i think the most significant one is this business of separating the speculating banks, the investment banks from the regular main street, it is my checking account, it is my savings account banks. we had that rule in effect for decades and it really protected the banking system. and if a bank that was speculating and dealing in fancy derivatives and all of this weird stuff and went bust, that was their funeral. you could let them go bust. they were not going to take the economy down with them because they didn't have millions and millions and millions of americans with their day-to-day savings tied up in their gambling, basically.

so getting that separation back, i think, is very, very important and i constantly support those bills. i constantly vote for them. i'm a co-sponsor of the new revised glass steagall act. one thing i can say, i'm very fortunate, i think we're all fortunate to have jack reed as our senior senator. i feel particularly fortunate because i get to work with him every day. jack doesn't toot his own horn very much, so i'm going to give it one quick toot in front of everybody here. that is to point out that at the end of this election in 2014, if jack gets re-elected, he is the number two right now on the armed services committee and he is the number two on the banking committee of the senate. both chairmen have announced

their retirements. so jack reed, if and when we re- elect him, is going to be able to choose to be either the chairman of the senate armed services committee or chairman of the senate banking committee. >> not both? >> unfortunately he only gets one, not two. you have to leave some scraps for the others, but that will be a terrific opportunity. so that's going to be a great opportunity for our whole state to have jack in that kind of a position. yes, sir? >> i'm a science teacher. i try to keep up on the current understanding of climate change. >> yeah. >> i'm one of those people who

has come to the conclusion that it is really happening and it is our fault and we're in real trouble. i know it is going to be a longer term problem than these financial or medical problems. i was wondering do you -- what do you see when you talk privately to our senators and representatives? do you see any motion towards understanding how serious this problem is? because what i hear on the air ways is people saying no, it is a controversy. the science community doesn't believe it is a controversy. >> no, people that know what they are talking about don't believe it is a controversy. the controversy is manufactured. guess who is behind the controversy? the polluters. the oil companies.

the coal companies. they put out lots of propaganda about this. what they have figured out, which is very clever, is that they don't have to convince you that it is not happening. all they have to do is put a little question mark in your mind so you think, i think that is controversial, right? so they just try to solve the debate with this is controversial. this is unsure. people are uncertain. this is a level of certainty that anybody would act on in their personal life. al franken is a friend of mine in the senate. we were talking about climate change one day on the senate floor. 97% of the scientists who know about climate stuff say look, this is happening. this is real. this is profound. it is going to change the way we live. we have got to do something about it.

franken has a good sense of humor. he says ok. how many people, just take our own senators, how many people, if their child was sick, would go to the doctor and the doctor said you need this treatment for your child. you think, it is expensive. i'm not sure i really want to do it. maybe there is a side effect. let me get a second opinion. so you get a second opinion. let's say you went and got 100 opinions. you went to 100 doctors to ask them is my child sick and do they need the treatment and 97 of the doctors said yes, your child needs the treatment. three of them said no. who do you go with? 97-3. who do you go with? it is obvious. it is obvious. and what is important about this is that it is not just theoretical any longer. for a while it was kind of theoretical. how much carbon can you put up. what does it do to the atmosphere? how does it create that blanketing thing? how warm does it get? well, we're already seeing it. go down to newport. go down to the tide gauge that has been there for decades.

the tides on average in rhode island are 10 inches higher than they were back when we had the hurricane of 1938 back in the 1930's. so you get another big hurricane like the hurricane of 1938. you know we could. we already did. and it is now throwing 10 inches more of ocean and actually that stacks up because of storm surge. that's going to be a very bad day for rhode island when that happens. the bay is four degrees warmer in the winter than it used to be. that affects a lot of things. that affects the winter flounder. when my wife was a scientist, she was studying the winter flounder because it was so valuable for our fisherman. they trolled up and down the by a catching winter flounder. our winter flounder catch is down more than 90%. it is 4 degrees warmer. the flounder don't like it as much. they had rather be offshore. the thing that eats them when they are little is the shrimp.

some would grow past where to shrimp couldn't eat them any longer. that's how they got to survive. now that's all change. the people who own the orchards in johnston in the northern part of the state, that grow apples and peaches and other fruits, they are seeing their trees bloom in the middle of winter. they have never seen that before. it is changing. it is really going to be very, very serious. so we have got to get on top of it and i think it is going to be a very tough lesson when we have to explain to these young eagle scouts and to their kids why when we knew all of that science, how is it that the american system of government allowed people to ignore what all the scientists were saying and how could the polluters have pulled off such a stunt on the american people? and that's -- i will tell you that question haunts me.

i don't have grandchildren yet, but i have got a 24-year-old and 20-year-old. and 20 or 30 years from now, this is going to be really coming on strong. they are going to be my age then. they are going to be looking around saying dad, what the hell? you knew this. scientists all knew this. all of this stuff is going on right now in our world and you didn't do anything about it? how could you? and i don't want to have to answer that question. so that's why i give that speech every single week on the senate floor. that's why i started the senate oceans caucus to get people working together on oceans. i have tried pass it now twice, the national endowment for the oceans. trying to get more information because it is really clobbering the seas. this one is -- this one haunts me.

yeah? yes, ma'am, sorry. campbell's got you there. >> what you were saying made me think that global warming is from our energy usage. >> yeah. >> so is this anything out there, different kinds of energies to use? >> oh, ya. >> besides moving our coal plants to mexico or china? >> if we just moved the coal plans to mexico or china, that doesn't do any good at all. what we need to do is develop new technology. some of them are basically already here. it is a question of bringing the price down. solar. the price is coming down constantly. wind. we're about to do wind farms offshore. i'm excited about that. you can drill down and do geothermal. in iceland, it is hot when you drill down so they can really do geothermal.

moving to natural gas is a very good first step because that is does so much less damage than coal and oil. and then there are terrific technologies that are emerging, including one company i visited out on the west coast that thinks it has the way to take the nuclear waste that's around all the power plants in the country. we don't have any place to put our nuclear waste. no place. so what they do is they leave it at the power plant and try to bury it some place relatively safe and guard it. there it is. poisonous as all get out. it is going to be poisonous for generations. what do you do with it? this guy thinks it could be used to reburn it as a new fuel and create new power. if we could crack the scientific problem of how you get the power out. not only is that essentially free power, you're avoiding the cost of having to figure out how you get rid of the darn nuclear waste.

so technology ultimately is the solution. and if you think of two things, when it is a -- when it is a natural resource, the more you use it, the more the price goes up. you have got to dig farther to get it. you have to drill farther to get it. you have to go further out in the ocean to find it. it gets more expensive and the price always goes up. that is the nature of the beast. but when it is technology, this stuff gets cheaper every minute. i can remember when if you wanted to buy a simple calculator. it was like $59.99 for a little dumb calculator that didn't hardly do a thing. now you go to the opening of an insurance agent or a new bank branch, they are giving them away for free. they cost a buck. so you want to be on the side of technology, not on the side of resources in terms of this. and we can do it.

and if we're good at it, we will own those technologies and we will export those technologies and we will be part of -- that will be part of our economic growth in the years to come, instead of importing oil from saudi arabia and propping up dictators in countries that really don't like us, we'll be inventing, which we're good at, innovating, which we're good at, exporting that throughout the world and having our energy future also be our economic future. that is my goal, anyway. two left. tony is saying. ok. yes, sir? >> my name is george. my question is for the last three years, the property tax has been going up and up and it seems like there is no limit. people are getting hurt. so what is the solution? >> well, the property taxes are

mostly a municipal problem. so pawtucket, newport, providence, they set their property taxes. that's not a complete dodge, because they set it but they set their property taxes in part depending on how much money the state can provide to support the different municipalities. as the budget is dried up for the state, there has been less money for the municipalities ask any mayor, so they have had to depend more on property taxes so it has been hard on property tax owners. and the states in turn, have taken a beating because there is less federal money coming in because of the cutting that we have done. i think we need to do two things. one is be very careful about what we're cutting.

sometimes when you cut, you cut off your nose to spite your face and it is not a wise cut. i think supporting the states and supporting municipalities is usually a reasonable way to spend money. cdbg grants and things like that are very, very helpful and allow a lot of flexibility for local communities. i think that is really important. another thing is that as the economy kicks up and taxes come in from other sources then you can be less dependent on the property tax. the property tax is like the last tax standing when people are not coming to the hotels, so there is no hotel tax, people are not buying things so the sales tax is crashing. what do you do? there is the property tax. there is the property owner. you kind of have to stick with that. the more we can get the economy going again, the better off we are. to me, the big jump-start for that is infrastructure. that is something that we need to spend money on, and you know,

people often say, if your family is short of money, you have to cut expenses. so that you balance your family budget and that's way the government should work. not quite right. because of that what we talked about earlier where you have got to offset what everybody else is doing so the economy doesn't crash and you don't have another greece or portugal here. but infrastructure, that's not just spending money. in your own life, that's like fixing the roof on your house that you own with your credit card. yeah, it might be a big expense to fix the roof, but you got to fix the roof. and when it is fixed, your house is worth more and you get that value. it is not like taking a credit card and having everybody go to walt disney world. you fix something that you own and it adds to the value of your home.

the same way with infrastructure, when you fix our american roads and our american bridges and you fix our american water pipes and water treatment plants, that is wealth in this country. and if it is spent wisely, it makes more wealth. because roads and water and utilities allow for development and allow for commerce. you can't let that stuff go. and we have let it go. we have a huge infrastructure deficit and it is just crazy. so i can't do anything directly about pawtucket property taxes, but if i can help make sure that money keeps coming into the state the way it used to so they still get supported and they can support the municipalities and the economy is cruising and lifting all votes, that's the best that i can do and that is my target. >> that is the point every year, it goes up 20% or 30%.

in three years, it has gone up 75%. >> yeah, it is not just providence. what i can do is influence their choice that we have an economy that is rolling again and that we're supporting the states and the municipalities so that they don't have to hit the local taxpayer so hard, because it is the local property owner who is the person who has to pick up the tab when everything else is dried up. and it gets very expensive. you're absolutely right. >> before we take the last question, license plate bb 796 has got to move your car, you're in the fire lane. bb 796.

i'm not sure who that is but if you could just please move your vehicle, we need to clear the fire lane. thank you. >> yes, ma'am? hang on. we'll get you a microphone. want to get the microphone to lynn, right here? coming your way. there you go. >> hi, how are you? i'm lynn. i'm from pawtucket. i just had a few questions for you. are you for or against the obama plan and why? >> the healthcare plan? >> right. >> yeah, i'm very for it. i helped write it before it got called the obama healthcare plan. it started in what's called the help committee of the senate and i had a temporary assignment to the help committee to work on that bill. i'm for it for three big reasons. one is a lot of people didn't have insurance in this country.

and if you don't have health insurance, it really affects your life, and it really affects the care you get when you get sick and it actually can make the difference between getting well and not getting well. it can even make the difference in some extreme cases between whether you live or whether you die. so getting people, more people to have health insurance, i felt was a really, really good goal and a really good achievement. the second thing is that the insurance marketplace wasn't all that fair. as i said earlier, if you work for a big company, you got a pretty good rate because the big company could negotiate like crazy. if you were with a little company you got not such a good rate. and if you were on your own, forget it. you were paying top dollar on your own and you were stuck. plus they put little tricks into the policy that said things like ok, now you're sick so by the way, there is a cap and we're not going to cover you past the cap or actually it looks like

that disease you have, you had it before you signed up for the policy and you didn't tell us about it and we're going to kick you off the policy because you didn't disclose, and if it is a pre-existing condition, you're stuck for life because no insurance company is going to cover it. that is a terrible position to be in. people want to be able to move around. i talked to rhode islanders who were literally trapped in their job because they could never get another job because they could never get a new healthcare policy that covered their sickness because it was now a pre-existing condition. they got it on one job and they were trapped with that company for the rest of their lives until they got to medicare and they were safe at last in medicare. basically all of the problems that we could think of with the insurance industry, i think were fixed in there. and the last thing is that it set off a whole array, there were 40 different programs to help innovate, to help figure out ways to help deliver better health department care cheaper. to figure out ways to pay a doctor in a different way so you

stay healthier. right now the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and when they order stuff for you. guess what happens to a system in which the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and they order stuff for you? they wait until you get sick and then they order a lot of stuff for you. that is an expensive system. what we want is a system that keeps you well. that can answer your question before you have to go to the emergency room. that keeps track of whether you're taking your medication so that you stay out of the hospital. those sorts of things. no doctor ever got paid for doing any of that. that's all changing. if you got a hospital-acquired infection, we're starting to stop pay hospitals for that. if you took your car to the shop and they dropped it off the lift, would they come to you and

say oh, by the way, we fixed your car, but also we dropped it off the lift. here is your bill for all the body work we had to do because we dropped your car off the lift. but if you're a hospital, we gave you a hospital-acquired infection and here is your bill for $30,000 infection, we gave you a bill for curing the hospital-acquired infection. that's nuts, so we cut that off. because what they were doing was, it is called the discharge order. when you leave the hospital that you have a discharge order and you have a discharge plan. well the discharge orders were crummy. the discharge plan stunk. nobody bothered to call your doctor and say they had released you. there was no follow-up. so somebody would do fine and

they would not take their medication and they would not do this and they would not do that and boom, they are back in the hospital. no, no, you have to follow up. you put the discharge plan out. make it a good one. and stick to it. you don't do that, you don't get paid. that changes the behavior. and those kinds of changes are what's going to change the way we do healthcare in this country and that's how we're going to get the costs down and at the same time, have everybody have a better experience and a better outcome. so those were the three big chunks of the bill. covering people, making the insurance industry fairer and trying to move this innovation thing forward. i think we did pretty well on all three. no bill is perfect, and it was a big bill. i'm sure there are bugs in it, but i'm pretty happy with it and i'm standing by. yeah? >> is it also true that -- my understanding was that congress has up until october 1 to veto that bill. is that correct or am i

misunderstanding something? >> the -- exchanges that market where they -- you have to be able to go there and say ok, i want to buy insurance. what are my choices? somebody has to be there and say hoc, here are your choices. that starts october 1. and i think if you don't get it done, they have a year for the federal government to back in. that starts october 1. now the people who want to get rid of the bill would like to get rid of it before f then, i think largely because once the exchanges go up, it will look pretty sensible. and in the same way that people are happy that their 26-year-old could say on their policy and were happy that they could still get coverage for pre-existing conditions and were happy that seniors didn't have to fall all the way into the doughnut hole, i think people will see this is a pretty good deal.

it is a market solution. that's what people should want. that's what the october 1 date is all about. there is a big push to repeal obamacare. well, you know, good luck. they have done it 40 separate times in the house. it is never going to pass in the senate. they want to keep doing it. >> employers out there announcing unless you work so many hours and work full time, we're going to cut your health insurance. i'm on 20 medications a day. i'm on insulin. i get zero help. i have health insurance. now they are saying you have to be full time and they are going to give you two or three hours less so you will not be able to have health insurance at work. i choose to work. >> well, good for you. good for you. >> because i'm able to work. >> if that happens to you, you now have a choice that you

didn't have before. which is that you can go to the insurance exchange, you can even go and talk to ian about it right now. what they will do is say ok, here is your list of options. there are like three levels, gold, silver, bronze of coverage. you say i want great coverage, ok coverage, medium coverage, and then you choose what one you like and then they will say ok, what do you make? and depending on what you make, there will be a subsidy so that you don't have to pay more than >> it is a sliding scale. 3% to 10%. no more than 10% of your income for healthcare. so whatever you're making, you keep 90%. 10% goes for healthcare and the rest gets made up for through the subsidy. so you get covered that way.

i think you'll find, obviously there are going to be a few bugs when you start something new. now you have a choice. if the employer doesn't stick with your coverage, you can go to the exchange and you cannot only get the coverage, but get the support that makes it affordable for you. so that it is affordable. >> why are they making it harder for the working people? >> this should actually make it easier. not only easier, but you're more flexible now. if you can go to the exchange and get that insurance coverage, you can work where you want. you're not stuck with your employer because of the healthcare. >> exactly. well that is a good thing, yes. i'm going to -- >> sorry to interrupt. i work for the mayor here in pawtucket. the mayor had a meeting tonight and he apologizes that it went over. he asked me to thank you on his behalf for all the work you and your staff do throughout the years and obviously tonight as well coming out and doing this

for the public. thank you. >> thank you, dylan. thank the mayor. he has always made me feel very welcome in pawtucket. thank you, everybody. good night. as i promised, i will be the last person to leave. >> i just wanted to say it is a pleasure. >> thank you. we will take you live another townhall meeting tomorrow. this one will be hosted by congressman bobby scott. he will be talking mainly about the healthcare law. it is the first of three scheduled, hosted by the virginia congressman. that is tomorrow night, 6:30 p.m. eastern time, that will be live here on c-span. next, a look at how news organizations operate and cover politics. we will hear from journalist from buzz feed, huffington post,

and politico. then the new jersey senate debate between all four democratic candidates running in the august 13 primary. after that, newsmakers with republican congressman ina or .ohrabacher of california >> of all of the handsome young officers surrounding my grandmother, he was 23 years old at the time. my grandfather could not talk to her because of all the handsome young officers around. to doll rushed upstairs whatever they were trained to do. she knew my father was -- she knew my grandfather was up there. he fell in behind going upstairs. instead of running back -- fainted right back into the arms of the president.

tenderly and gently. >> the encore presentation of our original series, first and image.fluence this week, anna harrison to eliza johnson. lex the hull to this discussion is the association for education and journalism and mass communication. this is about an hour and a half. >> thank you for coming. welcome to this wonderful panel. a welcome to our c-span audience.

politicalve top-notch journalists who do things differently. i am really excited about this panel, i have been looking forward to it for months. i'm dr. jane singer, vice chair of the aj stanley committee on professional freedom and responsibility. our chair is also here with us. we are sponsoring this panel, so it is a special session. a quick plug that more politics are on tap tomorrow. we are also giving our first amendment award this year to the first amendment center based in nashville area that's going to be a great program tomorrow during the plenary time spot. if you have nothing else to do, please come to that. we're going to do this very informally and just ask some questions and bounce around some answers and panelists are going to share their thoughts and we will open it up and i hope we have a great discussion.

i know you have some good questions. i'm going to go in the order in which they are seated. first to my right is bill adair, the new professor of the practice of journalism and practice at duke university. you probably know him better as the founder of politfact, the fact checking site you know. a pulitzer prize winner for national reporting from a couple of years ago. next is rachel smolkin, the current deputy manager at "politico." she has overseen the stories of the killing of osama bin laden come of the president's reelection campaign and you may know her from her great work with the politics team at usa today and the managing editor of the american journalism review. next to rachel is jen pendry and who is not on your program.

originally we were going to have an al jazeera reporter here but she has gone over to the mainstream and is now working for cnn, making her ineligible for the panel. so jen kindly agreed to step in and we appreciate that. she is the white house reporter for the huffington post and covers leadership on capitol hill. she joined huffington post a couple of years ago and spent years covering the legislative and executive wrenches of government for "rollcall." probably a walk in the park for her because she started covering the texas state legislature. again, stepping in for camille, so thank you for that. next to jen is john stanton who also has "rollcall" roots rate he is the chair of buzz feed here in washington. then smith, the editor described him as a reporter's reporter

with being in his veins. he's a third-generation news man and it probably doesn't hurt he's a former bouncer as well. at the end of the table is alex mueller, currently with "rollcall." he is currently the design editor, so he gives us a graphic perspective. he has a rounded graphics, graphic design and journalism and web design and production. his current career niche is making our legislatures look at least interesting online and in print. not sure we envy him that one. that's a great group and we are happy to have them here. i would ask you not to make any kind of hesitation. mercifully, none of them brought power points. i thought we just throw out some questions and jump in, panelists, jumped in with each other and we will talk about

whatever you want to talk about. we want to hear your views on the washington post and the transitional state it is in now. but we want to say a little bit about how you do things differently. what do you do that different from the way you cover politics and how do you define your role and how do you make it work in communicating to the public? >> i would be happy to go first and say we throughout the mold in terms of story form when we created political act --when we created politfact. the traditional news story, the pyramid, was not going to be the way we inform people about politics. we were going to do it through a different form of journalism and where the information was communicated both through an

individual fact check article and also through the collective. go to michele bachmann's politfact page and you can see she has been checked sixtysomething times and 50 of those she has been rated false or hands-on fire. so you learn something about michele bachmann to learn the collect of about her tells something as well as the individual articles. as we said up contact for our obameter, which tracks the president's record, we decided we would create something new. >> we will go in order here. i work for will it go, and all politics of location, now politics and policies we have expanded little bit in the past couple of years and continue to expand. we are very much directed at being fast and smart and trying

to think of the story that the post and the times might do the next day and we do it quicker and sooner. we have a traffic team of reporters and editors who work to make us look smart and we were directed very much at influence makers inside the beltway and out. it has been a big shift for me because before i worked at politico, i was at usa today, which is a mass publication. including people who might not be familiar to politics. it has been a shift to the inside perspective and we want to be interesting and accessible, written in a way that is punchy and so we think a lot about tone and style and how to tell a compelling story. >> i work at the huffington post trade you probably all know what that is.

if you go to the front page website, it's a screen of all kinds of issues all thrown up there together. to me, covering politics is great because we can take an heissue that is in the dailyand in andgrind of news and do it a little differently.daily andwe have the ability to run a wire story to get the daily, this is what is happening today, and we can put that up and separately go do something related to it which is not probably the way someone elsein awould report on it. andfor example, we've been focused on sequestration and the and inissue seems to have lost aand inlot of its wow factor and power in this town. areit's not something you hear youthat much about anymore except for side comments. reallysomething we have done that has been done for me and

unique to what we can do is we and in andhave focused on the subject and try to write on it all a time.andtime. we focus on janitors and we talk you and youto families in tennessee who are struggling because their kids are cut out and they don't know how they are going to get by everyday. it's related to the himdaily news grind, but i like to think of it as you kind of inject that into broader policy himissues all the time in this town.him him him him himfor me, that's one of the things i feel makes huffington different from political reporting. >> buzz feed is aimed at the 18 >> buzz feed is aimed at the 18 to 40 or so, a pretty broad range of people. coming from rollcall, the thing i found interesting is we have two things -- we focus on telling the stories in a way that will be viral.

we consider twitter to be our front page or facebook, we consider our readers to be our front page. that requires us to find ways to explain stories inside the beltway, congressional stories that your average person may not understand or have any real reason to care. we have to find ways to tell them those stories and it's been interesting. we don't write stories about commodity news kinds of stuff. we try to find ways to explicate those stories in a different matter. interesting things people are saying or doing as a way to tell these stories. it's a general news and entertainment site which is very

different than politico or rollcall. it's sort of the opposite way of going big to small and now you are finding a way to tell people who eric cantor is and why you should care about the fact that he and john boehner are having a fight today. that has been the interesting thing, but we are sort of trying to use social media as a way to broaden people's awareness of politics. >> our bread and butter at rollcall has been focusing on the stories that affect capitol hill and the community in general grade we been doing that since 1955, so we build relationships on the hill. we look at rotter issues like piggybacking off sequestration, but we also narrow it down to focus on how it affects the catol hill community and things like weight times to get

into the visitor center and things like that. we are broadening our web presence right now and doing a good job of that. we are always focusing on the stories that most affect the people who live and work in capitol hill. >> you talk about the audience and we have done that as we go along. do you find you're using different kinds of sources than you use in traditional media? how do you bridge that gap you are referring to of we are inside the beltway, but we need to help people who are not inside the beltway understand why this matters to them. does that affect your sourcing? >> we are very conscious of what people are talking about on twitter come a facebook, reddit,

and sites like that. if we see something pop up, we will report on it. after the trayvon martin verdict came out, for and since, there was an acknowledgment among white people that there was a thing that got termed black twitter. we did a story on black twitter and the power the black communities found in using twitter as a way to communicate things to each other and the broader national audience. those kinds of things happen in other areas. we used it to look at things like the election and people talked about a particular story or video someone put on youtube of a townhall, let's say or something like that great we definitely use it as a source, but we are still trying to have these very traditional notions

of being a reporter in this new world. we are talking to staff, members, the interest groups and people outside of the beltway it is a new tool to find out what people are interested in in a way to investigate the things they might already have prayed >> not just the use of social media sites, but since moving to politico from usa today, getting people who are in the room, making the policy, if there is a leadership fight some of these are abstract examples that all happen and we want to talk to lawmakers in the room and we want as much detail as we can possibly give. we did that at usa today but we were more likely to rely on a

professor who could tell you about the dynamics and overview, we want to get to the action as close as we can as consistently as possible. >> in the case of politfact, our rule is when reporters have defined original sources, it's not enough to renew a story that says so and so voted for this bill, we require the reporters to actually go to the rollcall vote and look at the original rollcall vote. we put a heavy emphasis on original reporting, unlike some of the other panelists. our metabolism isn't quite as feverish. we do a thorough fact check. sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it takes a little longer. our goal is to take a political claim and check it and be as

thorough about it as we can and doing so to rely on original sources more than secondhand sources. >> i feel like we have a lot of flexibility to decide on the way we want to do our coverage. what is fun for me is we can walk into the senate press area, i can walk up to marco rubio and ask how we are supporting the immigration bill and how this is upsetting people on the far right. this is like our tried and true sources, but i can walk outside and there's a huge rally outside with the tea party happening outside the capital and a colleague and i spent the afternoon talking about what we think about marco rubio's role in the debate.

do they hate him now? by and large they were unhappy. you probably can imagine what the responses were. those were separate stories that addressed the fight from a different perspective and from a sourcing standpoint, some of my favorite stories are talking to people struggling with the kinds of people that get talked up in this town and feel like they lose meaning, but when you talk about people not in the bubble here, you can get some great stories. they are real people and i think huffington has been really good for our sourcing, not just people in the bubble, but they've got millions of sources. why not talk about them? >> i wouldn't let too much time to buy without asking what's happening this week at the "washington post was quote and how you might think they will

change. being bought by jeff acis and someone who is very much into audiences and engaging audiences and serving audiences, will they change or will it be a different kind of competition for you or player in washington? will it continue the role? >> i think it is inevitable they will change. i think bezos has shown as jim brady put it, head of the digital first media, that he was able to see the future and build amazon before people knew they wanted to order things online. that is what has been needed in

journalism, somebody who can envision the ways people are going to want information a few years down the road. i think it is a great thing for the post and i know there are a lot of people who are apprehensive about it some but i think he said all the right things. the letter to the employees of the post was pitch perfect in terms of the balance between his commitment to the great journalism the post has always done, but 20 of clues for futurists who wanted to see what he is going to do. he invented almost internet commerce. so much of internet commerce has been affected by what amazon did and i think he could have the same role at the post. i think it's a very positive thing. >> one of our editors made the joke that a free washington post subscription with every candle

sold. it's a lame joke but if you think about it, you wonder how that is going to affect others and how that's going to affect local news coverage because the local news has been incredible at covering the d.c. reach and you have to wonder how they are going to evolve in the upcoming years with the new mindset of digital first. >> as a local growing up reading the post, i'm a little apprehensive. i think the post for a very long time seemed their core audience was not people in the city but sort of an upper economic group. they have started to change and have a great columnist is a fantastic writer. i'm a little concerned that move toward a more focused within the

city, focused on a younger demographic may or may not be helped or hurt by that. but i think there is a utility for families who live in those cities. having somebody who lives in california or wherever he lives and whose mind is not about local at all. i do have some reservations about what it will mean for coverage of crime and life in washington and even sports in washington. do they continue to be to go to place to read about the redskins or the nationals? does it become a bigger focus? these are questions that are not going to be answered for months, if not years as a result of this sale. on the same end, i do believe the post has been struggling a

little bit. all the big newspapers have been struggling and having somebody with such a creative online commerce can help create a new renaissance for the post and all of the old guard newspapers, which is very important. i don't think they should die. i think they play a very important role in our society. they are the institutes that hold what journalism should be on all levels and the beats of journalism. if someone can come in and find a way for them to come in and find a place within the new digital environment, that will be great. >> i don't have much to add. i also grew up around here and i have friends who worked there

and my sense is people are kind of excited. people have to change. we don't know how long it will take to show what's going to happen, but something had to give. we will see what happens. >> i think it's hard to say how seismic this feels in the industry and the graham family has been such a wonderful store of journalism and their names are synonymous with watergate and the pentagon papers and the kind of journalism that inspired a generation to come. it really feels like a dramatic turn in the industry representative of the time we live in. the panel is built around what our publications do differently than traditional journalism and this is a sign there is no more traditional journalism in the sense we are used to thinking about there is not web versus friend anymore because we live in a digital age and you have to

think about good journalism delivered to people in a way they can absorb it and get excited about it in a way that they wanted. for big metropolitan papers like the "washington post" and the "boston globe" and others that have been in the newspaper facing circulation decline and pressures, on profitability, they have to find a way to thrive in the new space if they are going to remain viable. we all watch the post and want to see it produce the excellent journalism they have for so many years but at the same time, there is a need to transform for them to succeed in the new world. the question i will have watching them move forward is

sometimes it's easier to come into a wholly new space and create something from scratch that is to take a existing institution with proud traditions and an entrenched uropathy and figure out how to make that move into a new space. that will be an interesting process for them. >> it will be interesting. they are coming from a very different place and dealing with a long-standing institution. something you have all mentioned going along the line here is getting people outside the beltway to care and see how sequestration matters to them. what if we could go deeper than that and offer some examples of things you have done that have worked really well in engaging your audience. how do you do that and what do you do with that feedback and how do you use it moving

forward? >> we wrestled with this because there had been some fact checking before. i'll a cell like it wasn't your vegetables herbalism. if you are in a newsroom, has to be done before an election. somebody do a story on the candidates decision on education and then they write a story and hardly anybody reads it because it's not appealing to people. we came up with the idea of the truthometer. we go out and do in-depth research and get together and have a methodology for this and come up with a rating. we know it is very affect event doing this because it drives

people crazy. they go bonkers about our ratings and the wonderful thing is, as they are talking about our ratings, they are having substantive discussions about policy which i guarantee is not happening with the long 20 inch fact check. you may not agree with our rating on any particular claim, but the great saying is that it's giving you a snapshot of our work and our best judgment of what the relative truth of it is and you can disagree. i think that is what is needed and one of the problems as we made the transition into the digital age is this expectation that the old construct a easier vegetables will work, and i just don't think they will. >> that's a terrific point great we all spend time thinking of how to make journalism

interesting and engaging. we're way past the world where this can involve today and how we can expect anybody to care about it erie it we've talked a lot about how to punch through. you probably all heard driving the phrase that politico drives so much. we talk about ways to measure if you are reaching your audience and what we do look at, is it being talked about by lawmakers and policymakers and hopefully in a respectful manner but we do use that as a measure. sometimes it's a committee meeting, the publication, all of those measures we look at on topics inside the fiscal debate to the talks we do so many of

and do them very well and we cover all aspects that there will be delays or employers on the obamacare mandate trade we did that for many topics and as we expand into more policy areas, are we looking at the best way to meld them with the core mission of e as well -- mission of politico as well. >> the huffington post has always prized itself on engaging with the communities. we have people with blogs on the site and have very engaging comment sections for most of the stories. engaging is a euphemism for something else. there is a lot of interaction with the non-mobile community. one thing that's a real success, when the senate voted down the background checks bill, there

was an outcry and a lot of people couldn't believe it who don't live in bc and don't follow politics a by day. why can we pass a background checks bill? one of our projects was we clicked something on the site that said if you have a personal story about being affected by gun violence, send it in. here is a phone number. call and leave a message. leave your name and number and we will call you back if we want to use your story. we've got hundreds of people who called. so many people have stories, all personal stories of losing a husband, friend, son, daughter, people killed in gun violence.

we had this huge splash on the front page. it was like 10 images on the front of the page that were just people. it was just people who have been affected by gun violence and really sad ways. when you hovered your cursor over one of their faces, it would take you directly to their story. you could hear it. you could hear the audio. you could hear their voices shake. and when they would get more worked up as they were talking. that was one of our proudest moments, because it is directly engaging the public on the issue that infuriated some of the people and letting the people

tell the story that resonates much more broadly than the failed bill in the senate. that is the kind of thing that huffington has been very good at doing, telling people to tell stories that in return d.c. has to read about. it connects to world in one way. -- two worlds in one way. >> in mid-december during the fiscal cliff fight, i originally read a story about how members were not feeling that much pressure, which is a very traditional motion. that interest in politics drops of red after the election. we went in and looked at the data from the web sites. i compared the point in the fight with that with the debt ceiling fight in 2011.

the thing we found is more people were reading stories about the fiscal cliff at that exact point in that debate than they were in 2011, despite the fact that they had just gone through grueling election where no one wanted to talk about politics. it was right before christmas. we were surprised that there were not many people. i think it is indicative of a shift that is going on in the public. i do think people are more engaged in politics than they have been in a few years. probably because they're frustrated. partly because they are increasing able to see the people they see with and agree with and that keeps them more engaged. the fights right now become

these life-and-death sort of deals. that gives me a lot of hope that we're finding a white, even if we do not understand how we're doing, it, people and keep them engaged with what is going on. i think one of the things that we try to do that helps with that is to try to find ways to make things a little bit more personal. i did a story that has had a lot of traffic to illustrate this. a friend of mine that was working for the defense department as a contractor and the sequester started, and he was your average american, lots of credit card debt, the house, divorced and had kids. he took a new job here thinking it would help him get ahead and get a handle on the finances and then the sequester hits. it sounds like a 2 percent cut, but it can be 20 percent of your pay in some cases. that reality forced him to

reenlist in the military. they go year without having to pay taxes and they get all these benefits by putting yourself in danger of dying. we did this story and a lot of people read this, an average american being forced into this terrible decision because of sequester. the other one that i think that very well that illustrates this is we did a story about the chief justice for fis the court. one of the highest-ranking black judges in the united states. we found this great essay he had done about being racially

profiled and what that meant for a justice and how he viewed the legal system. we just broke the spirit and this is a guy in charge of one of the most powerful courts in the world. a lot of people read it. an interesting way to look at the debate. i think it puts a human face on this otherwise impenetrable government bureaucracy. no one understands exactly. >> i agree with john when he says people have been more plugged into politics than they ever have been here yet that is in part due to media analyst covering politics on capitol hill.

sort of what you see is people are only going places that reinforce their already held opinions. it is important to provide an independent look at what is going on. that is simplified enough for the common person but still the ones be enough that you are not boiling it down to something where we're not getting anything out of it. i was talking about roll-call does the 50 richest list which looks at lawmaker wealth on capitol hill. we just revamped its this year to create this fantastic online database. when you talk about the fat cats in washington, now you can see easily just how fast those cats are. conversely, we also read about

the least rich lawmakers. some people who are not worth anything actually owe money. it is an interesting snapshot of who is making the decisions that affect you every day. you can look and see a lot of the people who have been on capitol hill the long this are the richest,, reject what committee they said on and how well changes from year to year. what sort of assets their money is wrapped up in. you are providing this fantastic resources for people to look at their own lawmakers and see exactly how much money this person has and whether you can make your own call on whether that affects the decision making. purely as a resource to learn information about the lawmaker.

that is the sort of resources and reporting that we pride ourselves on. and >> i remember joe biden always came in dead last. least rich on capitol hill. he made $200 on his book last year. [laughter] >> i know everyone has questions. each team has worked somewhere else. some of you have worked in more traditional places compared to where you are now. can you tell us how that is different for you personally, what you feel has been a change for you perhaps in moving into the work you are doing now. we're also interested in how you help students prepare for this

environment where there are all of these opportunities. what do they need to know to take a vantage of opportunities that are out there? >> i think they need to learn how to code. as someone who has worked for a newspaper for 24 years, the last six of that running politifact. i am struck by the tremendous opportunity for opportune it -- opportunity for students that can understand the fundamental of journalism and understand computer science, understand html and want to take the curiosity of record a list and put it to work on the web. >> i will push back a little bit on that from my own interest and

say i do not know -- do not care if they know how to code. i want to find students who are smart and curious. i was on a panel and talking to students in st. i think curiosity is the most important factor. i want to see the wheels in their mind returning all the time. we finish a moderator says are there any questions? a whole group just sits there and look at us. finally someone asked as a question. -- us a question. i think we get so focused on social media and the bag of tricks we forget that journalism in the most fundamental way has not changed. you still have to be able to ask the smart questions and do this

more reporting and be able to write a story that it's interesting, coherent and draws people in. i see young journalist be too reliant on the new tools. i could email my source or send them direct message. i want you to get out of office and have coffee with them and look in their eyes. many new tricks of the trade, that is wonderful, but not at the expense of the most important things that we do. fifth >> i have to completely agree. i asked for questions and it is silent. one of the first questions i have gotten is is it worth it to get into journalism? there will kick off all of the hits the industry has taken and it is depressing.

you do not make a lot of money. other than that, it is great. it is a great job. the teachers to organize the class suggested they should not go into it. i am like what are you doing? no names. are you interested? are you curious? these see something happening in your community that does not seem fair or right? someone disempowered that seems stomp all over by people of power. basic questions like that that need to be told because that is how it works. i have a friend who told me once that he loves his job so much because the only job in the world where your actual -- your actual job is to tell the truth. at the end of the day you are supposedly here to tell the

truth. you cut through all and you tell the truth. put it up for everyone to see. when it is a good story, that it's like the best feeling in the world. there are friends leaving jobs because of newspapers holdings and things like that, but it is the initial excitement of these that are wrong and telling people about it. that is our job. we look for people who are not necessarily i believe frederick to want to come to huffington and get into this world. we look for people that are created in want of different ideas because they are curious. that is the most important thing i would say. >> i would agree with all of you.

to learn the coding and things like that is very important and you half of the course set of values. i would say if you could teach them how to run a lead is awesome. i think my view of this is increasingly a lot of the kids i see sometimes, you read the other stuff, everyone is cause i-columnist -- quasi- columnist blogger. at the boys is something that seems completely foreign to the millennial generation. we all had the idea of what was a movie.

did not understand that they built that movie off over originally very boring stuff. a local crime story no one wanted to cover. they built the store that way. now it is more and more like a notion of understanding. it is a weird thing. i think that is the thing i have noticed with younger reporters sometimes make it frustrated by pierre did they feel like they're not getting ahead as fast as they feel they should. that is a shame because a lot of

them are very talented and maybe they have tempered their notion about what they will learn on the job, they would be better off for it. at the same time, i think because of the 24 hour news cycle, because of twitter and facebook and the ability to push things out, they have an ability that i do not know that we had what i was 22 or 23 and wanted to work all day long, all night loan -- all night long and never complained about it. they just do not. that is an amazing thing. every reporter i know is more than willing to drop what they're doing on a sunday afternoon and spend three hours working on a story. that is a credit to them.

>> i think it is a born for young journalists to look for ways to evolve their storytelling, whether that is increasing the media or looking for ways, working with other people in the news from to create resources to complement your story. i think you should have an idea of what coating is a you can work with someone else in the newsroom to create a package that shines and hesitates the term " -- go viral. you could be writing the best story, most important story, but no one sees it -- there is a so much competition out there right now. it is always important to be looking at ways to make your product unique.

>> as editors we oftentimes need to learn how to learn from them. they have, but a world that is foreign to me. i remember when pages for a new thing. kids come up and they have had laptops with wifi for a much their entire life. they do not know world without e-mail or all these things we did not know. i am constantly amazed, the reporters are work with that have a different way of seeing the world. different ideas about how to tell people what is going on in the world. things that i look at and i am like that is crazy. it has been an eye opener to work with the folks and my outlet because i have embraced twitter. i thought it was this silly thing. i really have learned it is a

valuable way to talk to people. if you can write a good, solid lead on 140 characters, i think you are doing something very bright. it takes me refer to figure out how to write a tweet that is not terribly misspelled and books right. they do it everywhere it was bleak. >> i would make one more point to piggyback on one of these comments. we've been talking about building a brand and the younger journalists seem to know instinctively. they are born with that in their dna. they note to do all of that, but i think there is a little bit that has been lost. paying your dues is still viable. there are some opportunities now for young journalist to cover congress, even the president before they have covered a zoning meeting in chester

county, which is where i started out. i think that is something that is important to emphasize. get ahead and take all the opportunities but did not miss the thing that you were when you covered with it when you cover the school board hearing and the county planning meeting. you learn how to deal with people, not be afraid of sources when they're yelling at you and how to tell sources at top story is coming and things that will ultimately make you successful journalist. >> i feel like we're in the don't take stage of the panel. kids today. >> i have more questions but we have such a nice audience. i will ask if your questions and also at the panelists at

questions of each other. let me ask the panelists, is there anything others have said that you would like to follow up on? >> when you work creating politifact what was the conversation around dealing with the fear that maybe you were watering things down or simplifying it enough that it was easy for the layperson to understand but not losing any of the details of the overall conversation and discussion. >> it started on a word document. from the beginning it was a meter. that gave us confidence this was not going to be seen too much. there was a willingness that this thing was a going to

revolve. there was a willingness to invent overtime. i have said this and other speeches in panels, the willingness of the management to stick with it. and stick with this and let us

to invent it, recognizing there would be mistakes along the way and what ever. i think it is a really cool story of creation. and also a cool story of team work. i was the guy who did the word doc scutched but the staff filled in the blanks and made it work. >> talking about writing today. i have to teach writing to these kids. i know how to do it, but i notions were created in 1973. has there been a definite change in how the writing style should be? the rise of logs -- blogs cause the softening of writing.

it caused a little bit of softening for a time where people that went from being bloggers to reporters. the notion that you do not to talk to a bunch of people. what he does is great, but not exactly hard news and reporting. he has some opinions and read about it. a lot of people thought that was being a reporter, and it is not. there is a difference. now there is a shift back.

it is tough to tell. when i was a kid, when i was a dumb reporter, i could not write my way out of a paperback. i spent hours being screamed at by my editor about how much of an idiot i was. i learned and got beat up said the head about how to follow a lead. a little bit of it is the speed of journalism, a lot less of that. editors often times say they will not spend the time to browbeat the reporter and explain why this is wrong, which does not do the reporter a whole lot of good. the need someone to say this is how you do it right and wrong. we get caught up in the speed of it and it does have an effect. as a reporter is incumbent upon

them and on us to be much more careful with our riding, at least the top of the story. >> the matter of the medium, the pyramid is timeless. you are not dealing with linked issues, space issues, but dealing with people leading the way. so if you have the attention span issues now. still important to get your best information at the top of the story. i have noticed the trend, mainly that some of them are pretty good writers and also pretty

good reporters. we throw them in the capitol building like here is congress, a figure it out. you have to start somewhere and get screened out -- his grain at a lot. one thing i have notice from the here and there stories i take a look at that the interns are doing, of some of them are great writers and really good reporters, but it is the lead. they seemed to vary the lead. you are like what? he said what? one thing i think maybe can help with that is for whenever my advice is worth, just talking through a story before you write it.

i think what sometimes there is a pressure to write everything you have and try to make something up tops down created by you are missing the content. where is the nagging that is the news? -- content that is the news? >> i absolutely agree with that. i do not want to hear any throat clearing at the start of the story. tell it quickly so i do not have to wade through to figure it out. i would much rather see someone who can write a good, strong news lead.

we're talking here a lot about the style of writing, but the other thing i would say is accuracy is more important than ever. yes, you could fix your mistakes quickly but a lot easier to make a mistake because it is not let me write this story and go up and eat lunch and have a talk with people and come back and fix it. you want it as accurate as possible the first time around. >> you did long form journalism. takeover politico is now launching a long-form journalism. i think the future of that is fantastic. i think the future is less great for journalism in the middle. i think long-form, more and more than ever. we're all talking about journalism that can really tell us something that we do not know. i think there is a lot of

exciting experimentation in the industry with how you translate it to the web. do you put it on a continuous green? how do you tell it best with video and promote -- formed journalism on twitter and facebook and the other places you might do it. i think the future is extremely bright because we're looking for ways to set journalism apart from others and make a difference with our stores in think that is the best way to do it. >> i agree. we started long reads of speed and has done extremely well. -- buzz feed. we did a long story about david lee roth's a couple months ago. it was fantastic. a lot of people read it. he reminded you of the old days sitting down with a magazine.

part of that was there was this push on the internet to make everything fast, get it out first. i think consumers of news are starting to shift back a little bit. they are saying there is 5000 of you and all of you are posting the exact same for sentences of a democrat at the same time. as editors we are saying i want more than that. i think the content over speed is driving this resurgence of long read journalism. i think it is very good. >> i agree with that. we are also launching a long form initiative.

we have an app for long form pieces. they are specifically who want to read it on their candles or whatever. to me, it is repackaging the way you present it. i feel very excited and hopeful for it. we do the really fast stuff all the time, but it is encouraging if we have ideas about long form pieces to go with it. we can work with the design team on certain pieces. we can have video that goes with it. not to distract you, but to put it all together that works where you are engaged with it. a field there is a lot of potential that has not been fully tapped. to go before we go on, i want to mention design. are there things you do that and engage people with that kind of journalism?

>> getting back to video or audio, not to accent the story itself, but you read a piece and you can click to watch the interview with the individual or they have just set up a camera during the interview and you can watch that as an addendum to the store you just read. that provides a different aspect of what you're looking for. you can see reaction to the questions and get a real feel for what the actual conversation was like. it is important to provide images. whether you are reading the newspapers or journalism or person writing it, a lot of gray

can be very daunting. it is interesting to see you are all launching -- read products that are in a specialized location. you want people to know there is a place where they can go that they can read along the peace about something they might be interested in. whether they can sit down with a have a long commute and plan ahead because they see something interesting bit like instead of accepting a clicking on it, putting it away and saving it for later and forgetting about it. it is interesting to see how that has evolved. here, and then behind you. this lady here.

>> could you talk a little bit more about how marketplace pressures affect the work your organization does? years ago there was a camel news hour. today there is more instances of advertising masquerading as journalism. >> trying to get us in trouble. take a like sponsor contents -- >> likes bonds are content, that sort of thing? >> what challenges your organization has faced, and either keeping that at bay or trying to do something with it. >> we are a little bit different than a lot of organizations because we do not have advertisement.

we did not have banner advertisements, pop up advertisements, things like that. the advertisement done on our website is sponsored content. it is very much in line with how we do things. mostly because we do viral marketing. i do not know whole lot about it. and could be they are in a different part of the universe. i did not know if anyone does any advertising. that is how it is. i do not know. that is how we do it. >> i feel pretty separate from the people that make those decisions.

i know when i see the pages, the story, there is an advertisement here or video advertisements here. i did not even notice them honestly. >> i think there is a very strong desire to keep advertising separate from the work they do. every news room i have bitten is focused on the separation. that remains critical to the success of the business. having said that, i think there is a little bit less. there is the fear of i cannot think about business because i am on the editorial side. i do not think there is a greater level of comfort.

i think editors and general crop across the business, papers probably interact more with the business side than they used to, and as long as that does not come up the expense or integrity of the journalism, it is necessary to keep it healthy. >> we would never elect the roll-call influence what we're reporting. we do have a web site run by boeing. it is set off to the side and very of front about it not being at -- roll-call is not writing this story. it is material. they pay us to advertise on the

web site. it has been well received in industry and a testament to the editor. the outlet saw this opportunity and ran with it. i think we will probably start more blocks like that. it was a new way to build revenue for the product. the unfortunate reality is you have to do it somehow. >> it is decent content. >> in our case, politico is an interesting aspect. they also provide content as the political side.

i do not think any standalone site is making enough advertisement to pay for the bill for reporters. the news organizations do it because it is great content. fortunately, i think politifacts is viewed as a public service. we have gotten money from foundations. i think that is another avenue.

>> a lot of people have questions. i think will -- we will ask the panelist one or two people to respond unless you really feel you need to respond. i have a question about legitimacy and this may go more to huffington post. >> first of all, michael hastings death. this delegitimized him in the journalism he did and what has been done. and then also, questioning of glenn greenwald and the david gregory questioning whether he

is a journalist or not. i feel like it is strange today we're still fighting the battles of who is a journalist and who is not and we are questioning people that are doing really good journalism. how do you go against these areas of going against what she wants to say that day. >> people say that? >> well, on the topic of "the new york times" it is an example of what is not journalism and was terrible. so there is that. on the broader question, people saying it is the content, i always point back to the 1930's

and this trial of the silent movie star accused of murdering and having sex with an underage girl. it was on the front page of every single newspaper in the united states for like a year and a half. it was the biggest story. during the depression. during the worst economic time in this country's history, this was a top story. we have created this motion in my mind that for some reason, journalism, there was a decade- long time of very serious news and kim kardashian's back end was not something anybody read about and suddenly in the past decade it is all right about, and that is wrong.

the history of the profession is both of those savings are talked about. they want to know what is going on with kim kardashian. if they want to know what is going on with sports teams, but they also want to know when a general is acting like a crazy person answering bad things about the commander in chief. i have never understood the notion that those things cannot coexist together perfectly well, or the idea that there are serious journalist that do this other stuff. i have tried to write a story several times and very difficult to do. takes a lot of time and skill. you have to have an eye for what will make people want to read it and continue to read it. >> i read the top 20 things

about growing up in the 1980's that was awesome. loved it. >> requires you to have a depth of knowledge and understanding of how to relate information to your reader. those are exactly what made a good journalist in any part of the business. so that is my take on it. >> i have thought about this, and there is a difference between being between journalism and things people want to talk about. to me, they are both valid. we have what is miley cyrus doing to her hair? she is almost bald now. those things are there now. i am not sure you would call it journalism, but they are there. people want to talk about all kinds of stuff. to me, that is fair. it is the way it works. then there are stories that are next to the stories that are well reported pieces of journalism.

it is the way it works of huffington. the miley cyrus storey and cute cat pictures are like catnip. they come to the site of like clicking on them, but hopefully while they are they're clicking on the fun things and our board at work and do not want to work anymore, they will notice this story next to a about the latest fight over closing abortion clinics in texas or something, a real substantive issue to be reported on. people who have left their house and wrote a really good piece. that is journalism. to me, it comes down to pretty basic stuff. then there is journalism. does that mean they're not worth reading about? i think they're fine. i like those things. i read heavy stories and i like to look at the cutis cats born

in 2012 but i also want to know what is going on in texas. if it is a well-reported peace, it is journalism. and it is a fun read. it is not that hard to differentiate. i think it is great because this together. in the end, it is human interest. >> if you like those, 20 reasons why john stanton should be in the 20 most beautiful people in washington. >> i have a question about the archiving of your content. a lot of you are born digital and only think about digital. as someone who thinks about capturing content for the future, what, if anything, could you go back and get from years

ago or that is continuing on in the next 10 years is someone going to be able to get content from today 10 years from now? >> that is a great and important question. as someone who is moving on to academia, i cannot tell you how many broken links i have found in the past two-three weeks. it is so frustrating. when we created this, we said it was going to be as important for people to be able to look things up as it is for people to see the latest fact checks. there has been a commitment from the start to archiving. the commitment was that we would also give the content to nexis. it is preserved in both places.

you just want someone to put some energy at every news organization to go put energy into fixing the link. some of these will time out. a news organization will say this could only be used for two weeks. is a really big issue. >> take a more and more organizations are posting their news library. what used to be the place responsible for collecting and archiving is gone and those functions have not been absorbed by other people in the news organizations. especially troubling for the born digital publications. >> that is a great question. theoretically it should be on

the internet. we update stories over and over. as the news story developed throughout the day, we call it more times, depending on what the news dictates and then switching to the analysis piece. i find myself more often telling editors let's start and won because i want to preserve the original story for the people looking for it -- start at new link. >> there is no protocol for that at news organizations. i am putting things on the newtown shooting and trying to find the early news stories and they have all been written through. there is no protocol in journalism for how you do that?

how to use signal to a reader that this is an old story. if you want to correct one, go to this. we have not sorted it out yet. >> it is something that is new, we will put up data of the top. the original version is not there anymore. that is definitely something we are very actively thinking through a minister right now. >> how much do you discuss the finding your role and defining the presidential field for 2016? we hear about grand paul and mark rubio. >> we just wrote about this today.

this is actually it -- we have a debate about it all the time, almost every story. i feel like our reporters are very reluctant to become part of the cottage industry of the next presidential election the day after the last one. >> we will stay with that. but, the reality is we all do it. i think right now, i have been trying to not get too far ahead of ourselves end allowing us to interview the players. paul ryan is not doing anything to make it look like he is really running for president. i feel like he probably is, but he is keeping a lower profile than save and paul is. pretty good about keeping it to the limited.

>> we started off early in the discussion talking about implications for the buyout of the washington post. one of the things we've been able to do is whistle-blowers. let's say edward snoden's best friend comes forward. he believed he wants to blow the whistle on government mismanagement. how does your organization handle that if they want to come to you because you are not the washington post? >> we would handle it the same way. i think they have done a very good job of being good stewards of information. there are tons and tons of information. way more than anybody realizes.

said we're not want to use this for whatever reason, it will put someone in danger or whatever. i think they have done a much better job than some of the legacy u.s. papers. the new york times has erred too much on the side of caution in some cases. i think there is a model of how to handle that frankly. >> in an era of citizen journalism, he chose to go through traditional journalists. he could have very easily posted that of the website somewhere, and he did that need journalists, but he did. it would be fascinating to talk about this because i've -- because i would presume if he posted on the website it would

be shut down but if he could and list -- enlist if journalists that they would give credibility and protection to him. so it has been a fascinating episode, and yet, he really did not have to have them and probably had he put it up, wikileaks would have taken a snapshot of it. >> an organization that could go to bat for you. especially some of the smaller small citizen blockers would back away from that in a heartbeat. >> we had a series on ecuador.

the government enlisted the outfit in spain to put the screws to us and get the documents we have gone taken down from file-sharing sites. a few of them agreed. there was never a question. there was never a question from the top-down that we would protect not only rosy but the story and make sure the website put the information back up. we pushed back hard and they did. i have worked roll-call and work here and i know both of them and i feel like all of us come from that same place. >> i think we have all work that organizations were the top leaders are very respected journalist and what not back down from a fight if they felt it was the right one to be having.

>> we would handle it similar to greenwald said approach of handling this. >> time for one more question. one more question? anyone? final thoughts. tell us one thing that has been the most fun for you in this new endeavor. give us a lead. >> in this panel or in life? >> i think the new media world creates great opportunities for invention, and in my previous job, i loved working with people to invent. it was great fun sitting in

meetings coming up with stuff. in my new job i am looking forward to a new and different things. i think invention is a time of invention. i think there is a great spirit of journalism to do that. >> i agree with that. i think the creativity and the adrenalin of the new media world are incredibly exciting. i think there is a time where practically everything we are covering feels like a first. the debt ceiling, brinksmanship or anything else. i feel like we're living in historic times and have a new way of covering this to get the news out. so it is of very exciting time to be a journalist in washington. >> i have fun every day.

it is fun. it is fun to be a journalist right now. this frees me up to take all kinds of different approaches to stories that previously i probably would not have been able to write. really quickly, i am thinking of one now. i ended up in a twitter exchange with republican congressman about gay marriage. we went back and forth back and forth. in the end he said he did not think we should have the defense of marriage act. this is a republican congressman who leans libertarian. that was a new story that a rogue, and it tweets into the story and was published onto the site. it was a fun exchange. random people were jumping into the conversation. even five years ago, we could not have done that. the gay marriage fight and emphasis we have

been putting on the lgbt community has been the most interesting and fun part for me on this job. since i came on last year, it has been a major focus for the site. be a newsto organization that is focused on that. the civil rights issue right now . that moment when you get to say yes, we are working on this and paying attention to it, and it is an important thing. for me, that has been the best thing. >> i agree with everybody. you all so my answers. -- you all stole my answers. that media is playing, whether it creates a story, or

sources, it is an exciting time to be a journalist a journalist especially in d.c.. we are seeing history being made right now. it is incredible. it is an important time to be paying attention to politics, so it is exciting to try and get those stories out there to as any people as possible. >> that is a perfect note to end on. thank you so much. [applause] i don't want to volunteer their time, but -- [indiscernible]

tonight, at 6:35 p.m. eastern time, we show you former pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate rick santorum appearing at the second annual family leadership summit in ames, iowa. here is a preview of what he had to say. successful --be if we are going to be successful country, wend as a need to have a revitalized program and engage in it. that is where you come in. last lives and breathes the values. this administration wants to make sure that that does not happen. beinge ready see policies put forward by the administration that are changing

the freedom of religion in this country. you see from the administration that internationally the state department uses the statement, freedom of worship. be in the four walls of the church and worship, but do not take that religion and faith and practice it outside of the church. there, we will restrict you. see it happen already, and it will explode. i will never forget a quote by the cardinal in chicago who said bed. i expect to die in my i expect my successor to die in prison. his successor to die a martyr. unless we begin to do what they do, use not the policies, do not idea that we need to change our policies, but we

need to change our tactics to be more like they are. [applause] rex we will have war with the former senator tonight at 6:35 p.m. eastern time on c-span. tomorrow morning on washington journal, we hear from matt bennett, the cofounder of third way. his groups efforts to influence issues related to the economy, immigration, and national security. we also have kaiser health news and its hospital -- and its impact on hospitals and medicare patients. then we talk about the wic that serves up and infants and children. all of that tomorrow on the washington journal at 7 a.m. eastern time. >> the media business is a huge story. for the first time, a true digital data has stepped into would've the legacy media

businesses in our country. if he acts in any way like he did in disrupting the book publishing business, the delivering of streaming media and e-commerce, mr. bezos will probably disrupt and re-envision what it is to be a newspaper in the 21st century, and how that business remains a business. journalism itself is changing. it manifests in different ways am a whether it is a blog or through twitter, the intersection between video and newspapers these days, it is hard to say where it is headed. we are at a stage where it is still being figured out. with jeff bezos by the post, that is one example of one possible future of the newspaper. that is monday night on the communicators on c-span2.

>> heading to new jersey where last week, all four of the states democratic candidates debated. the front runner of the race, cory booker, along with representatives rush holt and frank pallone. also, general sibley speaker sheila oliver. they will be vying for the seat vacated by senator frank lautenberg, who died in june. the special election will be held october 16. this comes courtesy of new jersey public television. ♪ >> good evening. we welcome you to the campus of montclair state university. i am mike schneider, the managing editor here at njtv.

in alphabetical order, the candidates are cory booker, rush holt, sheila oliver, and frank pallone. joining me is editorial journalist alfred doblin. each will have 60 seconds, but each will also have up to 60 seconds for rebuttal. there is a timing light that will be used, and it is my job to see that light and to use that light. you have no studio audience tonight. if you would like to join the conversation, you can be part of it. you can follow us on twitter. let's begin. the candidates drew straws. cory booker starts.

>> good evening, and i would like to thank everybody who organized this debate. i began my career in newark, but i was born in bergen county, some of the smallest towns there. i chose to move to newark. when you bring people together, you can make tremendous progress. the heroes i met and others during my time as a person representing people who cannot not afford attorneys showed me that philosophy could work. 15 years later, going from a time when newark's headlines were about crime, the city has changed, but the city has seen progress.

we have lowered crime, ushered in the biggest economic element period since the 1950's, and hope is on the horizon, testimony to what people can do, taking on difficult challenges working together. as we look at washington, we do not see people doing that. i believe it is time for new leadership that can bring people together to make changes to do difficult things to help us have progress. >> thank you very much, and for the next opening statement, rush holt. >> thank you. i should level at the beginning by saying i have never run into a burning building. i am well known to many in new jersey because i am the guy who took on the jeopardy! computer and won. i am a dedicated progressive.

i hope new jerseyans know me as one who is dedicated, a hard- working public servant, someone who fights and gets things done. when a new jersey soldier committed suicide and his parents said do not let that ever happen again, i got $40 million for mental health and suicide prevention for soldiers and veterans. knowing that through investing in education and research, you create jobs and improve the economy, i got $22 billion in new research money, medical research, environmental research, the national science foundation, the largest increase ever. long before anyone had heard of edward snowden, i was leading the fight in congress to take the nsa to task.

i wrote a legislation to repeal the patriot act and the fisa amendments act. throughout my career and this campaign, i have been advancing the bold ideas that we need to extend the american dream to all americans, bold ideas people will be talking about tonight. >> thank you very much. sheila oliver. >> i appreciate the opportunity to engage in dialogue with my opponents in this quest to fill the seat of the late senator frank lautenberg. it is my hope that the voters of new jersey listen intently this evening as we focus on issues that are not just important to capitol hill, but also those issues that are important to the people that live in the state. as a u.s. senator, you have an obligation to engage in moving the agenda of the nation forward, but you should also use

that representation to help move an agenda forward for the state of new jersey and its citizens. as a legislative leader, i have visited the length and breadth of the state, engaged with communities from cape may up to warren, and not just during a campaign. i think that my 10 years in the state legislature and my four years as the speaker of the new jersey general assembly has equipped me with the ability to best represent the state of new jersey as a u.s. senator. i look forward to the dialogue this evening, and i know that the residents of the state are better served by having the opportunity to see the differences and the similarities to between our respective candidacies. >> thank you very much. now frank pallone.

>> thank you for being here as well as thanking alfred doblin, and it is important that this is the first time they candidates are getting together for the debate. it is an opportunity for voters to see where we stand on the issues and to make clear choices. i think they will see clear choices. i would like to be your united states senator. i represent you now in congress. i am the father of three children raised in the same town where we still live. i really want you to understand that although you may hear often tonight that congress is broken, that i really believe that in congress, as a senator, i can make a difference, and i have tried over the years in congress, or i have been now, to actually work on problems and come up with solutions. i think you can get things done in congress. when first elected to congress, all of the beaches were closed

along the north jersey shore, and i worked hard to clean up the ocean and close all the ocean dumping sites, often with senator lautenberg who was my partner in the senate. i worked with him in order to clean up toxic waste sites in new jersey, with the superfund program. when obama became president, i helped to provide universal health care with the affordable care act. it is making a difference in people's lives. i believe in congress you can make a difference. you can get things done. >> thank you. that concludes our opening statements. we want to discuss issues that are germane to our state, country, issues that take the role of a senator, which transcends our communities and our state and takes in a worldview as well. congressman holt, you up first. the question revolves around the

terror warning that was announced over the last couple of days, information obtained by the nsa resulting in the u.s. issuing traveling warnings overseas, closing a number of embassies throughout the arab world, and heightened security at home. you have been very critical of the role of the nsa and the surveillance program as well. knowing what we know right now and knowing that much of this information has come from intercepts by the nsa, are you changing your mind about the way you view the nsa surveillance programs and the way they may impact our fellow americans? >> no. for years, i was on the intelligence committee in congress. i understand how they work. i do not know the details of these. i am not on the intelligence committee now. but we can presume that these were international intercepts, which we should be doing.

but the idea of vacuum cleaner wholesale collection of information, personal information, about americans is completely acceptable. it is not simply unconstitutional. it changes the relationship between a citizen and a citizen's government. if the government regards people as suspects first and citizens second, that changes the very structure of our nation and a reason for being. and this has to be put to an end, and that is why i have the legislation that would repeal the patriot act, would repeal the fisa amendments act. >> thank you. madam speaker, your view of the nsa programs? >> after we all experienced loss of life in benghazi and we learned today about the terrorist activities in yemen and the al qaeda extremists, i believe there has to be a balance.

there's no doubt that for national security and for the security of american citizens, we must engage in the gathering of intelligence data. that must be balanced very properly with the constitutional rights that citizens in this country have. we are in an age of technology. our smart phones can be tracked. red light cameras are on us all day. surveillance happens at every intersection in this country. i think that technology has placed us in a situation where it is inevitable that data is collected on us. but it is imperative for our nation's commander in chief and the joint chiefs of staff and the intelligence community to have the ability to protect us. >> thank you. congressman pallone? >> the terrorist warnings do not change my mind with the problems with the nsa.

we have to protect civil liberties, and i'm concerned we have gone too far with this nsa program. i did not vote for the fisa amendments. i do not vote to reauthorize the patriot act as i was concerned about infringement on civil liberties. i think at a minimum we should say that any kind of information gathering that goes or is obtained through the fisa courts has to be only for a particular investigation, not just a broad brush that you go after anything that you may not even use. there has to be transparency with the fisa courts. their decision should be made public in most cases. we have to be worried about how these judges are appointed in the fisa court because they are not appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the senate, which they should be. again, i think we have to have a balance, but right now the balance is skewed too much toward surveillance and infringing on civil liberties. we have to change it. >> thank you.

>> what is going on overseas is not an abstract concept to me. it is something we are dealing with, that have to with in newark. we have to every single day work to keep our residents safe. that is why i went to the situation room in the white house. you have got to balance the urgent need for security with the other urgent need about what makes us american, which is our privacy rights. this is not abstract to me. we have had to do it. when we put up the public safety cameras that the speaker was speaking about, we reached out to the aclu first. we have to deal with this every day. i look at washington and i see they are not in balance. we have a job. it is not being done right now. they should be doing a lot more to get oversight to the executive, and do some of these

things like the fisa court which are doing things that are unnecessary infringements onto the privacy rights of america. >> we have a one-minute rebuttal period. >> the point of the fourth amendment is not to make things difficult for enforcers, but it is to make sure that they do their job, to make sure it is not to preserve civil liberties niceties, it is to make sure that these agencies that have fearsome powers to intrude on people's personal lives demonstrate to an independent judge that they know what they are doing. that is what makes us safer. this wholesale vacuum cleaner collection does not make us safer, and it tears at the fabric of our society and our government. and i must say, i am the one in this campaign that has been talking about this openly and vociferously and repeatedly and

strongly, this and the other progressive issues that we need to get our country going to where it should be going. >> thank you. madam speaker? >> this is no novelty in the united states, the collection of intelligence data on citizens. when we saw the release of the papers on j. edgar hoover, we learned he was collecting intelligence data on some of the most civicly minded citizens in this country, martin luther king, the kennedy family. intelligence gathering has been happening in the united states way before we had to deal with terrorism. the issue today is that with our place in the world's order and the importance of the united states and its allies.

there are extreme theocracies that operate in the middle east that have as their main purpose thwarting democracy. >> what i am saying in terms of how this should operate, you talked about the terrorist warning. if the agency knew or had an inkling that there was an al qaeda attack that was about to begin and was coming from pakistan or yemen, they could go to the fisa court and they could say we have this investigation, we have this information, and therefore we need some surveillance to look at the actual situation in pakistan or yemen or the al qaeda operatives that are actually potentially planning this attack. that would be a specific investigation that they would be going before the court and ask for that authority.

that is not what is happening now. they are simply asking verizon or at&t for anything that they have about anybody without there being a specific investigation. that is what is wrong, and i do not know if that is what was intended with these fisa amendments or the patriot act. in the patriot act, it actually says you have to have a specific investigation. that is not what is happening now. >> this is a point of distinction that is important. please understand these security and privacy issues are paramount, and i agree with the congressman about how people are concerned about that. do not forget the congressmen holt and pallone voted for the patriot act. this is where i disagree with congressman holt. the reality is there are aspects of that they need to be changed, but this needs to be done in a special manner because there are aspects of the patriot act about

people who drive dangerous chemicals throughout state that empower police like mine better conjunction with our federal authorities. these are difficult issues, and a key right now is that we need aggressive oversight and action by congress to keep people safe. we need privacy rights of american citizens. >> second question, we will start with you, madam speaker, and it is semi-related. mr. snowden has been granted temporary asylum. many people within the u.s. government are appalled by that. many are equally appalled by the treatment of the gay community in russia because of some new laws that have been adopted by the putin administration. some say it is starting to feel like the cold war over again. should the united states reevaluate its relations with russia? >> i think president obama has

certainly expressed in his discussions and his meetings with putin that he is displeased his stance that russia has taken, so much so that they could not engage in a long discussion. you know those talks took off. i think that we do have to re- examine the motives of russia as you look at eastern europe and you look at the breakup of the soviet union. there is a lot of dissension in that region. we saw in boston this year that you had two brothers who emanated from that region and they came to the united states and to boston with the intent purpose of wreaking havoc and harming americans. i believe that we have to re- examine our relationship with russia. we have known for years that russia is the provider of arms and potentially nuclear weapons to a number of different

countries that are not necessarily our allies. >> thank you. >> i think relationships between the united states and russia or between united states and any country should be primarily based on democracy, rule of law, and also a market economy. those are the principles that we espouse. i think the president has to look at the relationship in that respect. if he feels that the treatment of the gay community or the way that they are granting asylum to snowden is something that goes against those principles, for example, the rule of law, then he has to decide what kinds of actions to take. the case of snowden is not important enough to our relationships with russia. we have to worry about those three principles in everything we do, in terms of our foreign- policy, and to push russia to become more of a democracy, to recognize the rule of law, and move toward a market economy. everything should be looked at

in that way, and i am not sure the snowden case is enough of a problem to go back on our relationship. i think we need to work on the treatment of gays and push russia for the rule of law. >> it is not just snowden, not just what is going on with the gay community, it should mark the outrage of all of us who believe in human rights. understand that russia is also supplying support to the syria regime in serious, and what that regime is doing to its people is unconscionable. over 4 million displaced people, 1.3 million outside the country, humanitarian issues are abounding because of russia's actions. the reality is we just saw in boston how important it is that a relationship with russia to share critical of safety information. it is in this context that i support the president in using measured diplomacy, pushing for what are not just american issues, but when it comes to

syria, the military, humanitarian and human rights as well. we need to advocate for what is right and for critical american interests. >> russia is always testing and straining the relationship. we should not sacrifice the diplomatic relationship with russia because of the snowden affair. it is not that significant right now. we need russia to be working with us on syria and a number of other things. we need to take them to task on many matters around the world and within their country. when i mentioned earlier about my background as a teacher, a scientist, to say i would bring a unique background to the people of new jersey to the senate, it is important to point

out that the senate has a lot of international responsibility. i am the person here who was actually on the negotiating team in geneva representing the united states across the table from the then soviet union on the abm missile violations. >> time for rebuttal. >> yes. you know, the issue of snowden, snowden is not the first. it is just that attention has been drawn to his most recent disclosure of sensitive information. our military leaders have been dealing with and having to address members of the intelligence community who have, with frequency, taken measures of national security and

provided documents and other things to other nations. so i do believe that snowden is no anomaly. we have a history of this and we can point to those who have done this in other situations. i think the snowden issue raises a broader issue when we begin to contract out to defense operators responsibility for our national security, we cannot control the outcome. >> congressman? >> i think russia and our relationship with russia is very similar to what it has to be with other countries. we believed in democracy. we believe in the rule of law. we want to protect the human rights and we want to have a market economy. oftentimes the countries do not live up to that. the arab spring has brought that out. that was an example where many people in the arab world were really looking for democracy and so with mixed results because

they do not have a history of democracy. russia is very much the same. we have to recognize that russia is an important country. they have nuclear weapons. they are on the security council. it is not like we can cut off relationships because of the snowden case. i do not think that makes sense. i do think at all times we have to think about what we are doing to push the russians toward democracy and towards rule of law. i am very much and concerned about how they have changed their laws in ways that violates human rights. you mentioned the gay community. also the instance with adopted children, where they were taking the wrong stance. we have to continue to work toward those guiding principles. >> this is an example that is difficult and challenging. russia is playing an important role globally, whether we want to recognize that or not. the reality is when it comes to nuclear weapons, one of the biggest threats to the safety of america or our allies is nuclear

proliferation. we need to make sure that problems like that do not get out of hand. we live in a community now. snowden is somebody that should be returned to america and given a fair trial. there are so many other interests on the table right now nuclear proliferation, terrorism, what is going on in syria, and this necessitates america not acting single- handedly, but acting in a community of countries that can give a call to the consciousness of the globe to begin to push for human rights, to begin to push against nuclear proliferation, and begin to suppress the urgency, not facing america, but all democracy on this globe, pushing against the real threat of terrorism. >> thank you. rebuttal or expansion? >> i am sorry, i thought we had been through that. i guess this was a repeat

question. >> your chance to rebut. >> thank you. as i was saying, i would agree with the mayor that there are many things that we need to work with the soviet union on and we should not throw away the relationship on the basis of the snowden affair. >> we will take a trip to our studio next door and standing by, alfred doblin with his first question. >> there are conflicting opinions about what the united states should be doing with regard to syria. after lengthy wars in iraq and afghanistan, there's not an appetite to be engaged in any kind of boots-on-the-ground combat. there is some discussion about whether we should be providing

aid to the rebels and there are questions about whether we know who the good guys are. what do you think we should be doing in syria? >> the u.s. always has to be guided by certain principles, and this primarily is democracy, rule of law, and a market economy. in the aftermath of the arab spring, it is clear that the people in these countries would like to see democracy. they're not used it and there's not a lot of experience. right now the problem in syria that the president pointed out was the use of chemical and biological weapons, which he said would be a mark whereby he would then intervene in some fashion. but he has been very cautious. he does not want to put boots on the ground. he is talking about arming some rebels, but is concerned whether they are possibly terrorists or they are democratic oriented. we have to avoid the boots on

the ground if at all possible, and we have to be very careful, constantly being guided by principles of democracy, rule of law, and market economy. that is easy for me to say in the abstract. in terms of reality, we have to be very cautious. >> i want everybody to understand why this is such a serious issue. you have the assad regime who is in league with the iranians who are the single largest state sponsor of terrorism, and the assad regime is in league with hezbollah. this poses a serious threat. it would be easy to think we need to do everything we can to oppose them. on the other side, a group of forces opposing assad that range from pro-democracy folks to people who are terrorists themselves. there's no easy way to arm the opposition and win them. that is why the obama administration is doing the right thing.

one is not committing the american troops. that should be the last issue. we need to support our allies, jordan, turkey, who are dealing with millions of refugees, making it difficult on their infrastructure. we need to act thoughtfully and make sure we do the right thing by not just americans' interest, but their interests of the region as a whole. >> thank you. congressman. >> as someone who fought against the iraq war. it is clear that the public has no stomach for military intervention in syria. nor, should we. we should apply the lesson that we learned in the 1980s in afghanistan when the armed the rebels, now known as al qaeda and others.

the principle applied was "the enemy of our enemy is our friend." we should be engaging in every possible way to get this under control. hezbollah is tied up in this. the future of israel is tied up in this. we want israel to survive and prosper for everything that it stands for. we want to bring a peaceful solution for the palestinians in the area. what is going on in syria >> i believe that if the united states is to maintain its position as a world power and dominate as a willpower, we need to pay attention to syria. it is unfortunate that we did

not intervene rwanda. we have to recognize that this is a sensitive region of the world and what we do in syria or, what we do not do, may be viewed as a lack of u.s. response to save lives. i do believe that international allies need to be engaged. the united states should end straight leadership. our allies should provide support to the people of syria. >> thank you. i believe in resident obama's cautious approach. i think that assad has to go all

stop i do not think that we should push for democracy. he is a dictator. he has to go. we have a question of chemical weapons being used and the human rights violations that are going along with that. we had to make sure that this requires certain action but united states. because of this cautious approach, no ground troops, some arms to rebels, figuring out who is pro-democracy. arming international organizations, like we did in libya. we should reject the united nations and we have, to some extent. russia has a potential veto and could use the veto in the security council. i would take caution. i would respect the president for what he is trying to do because he understands what needs to be done.

>> i think there is a lot of agreements tonight. i want to make a few more points. assad must go. it must be done in a sober and deliberate way so that we do not cause more problems in the long run like we saw in the early and immediate. we need to make sure that we do everything we can to support other nations that have been destabilized from refugees and others going into their country. that means looking at lebanon, turkey, as well as israel. finally, america does not need to act alone. we have learned this the hard way in our history that if we go it alone, we put ourselves in jeopardy. when asked in a community of countries that share the same values, we can be a lot more effective. we can bring back stability to a region that is way too unstable. >> thank you.

>> an important factor to be considering with the next senator of new jersey is who has the experience and sophistication to deal with international questions. i talked about the complicated situation in that part of the world. the friends, if you pull on one, it pulls through jordan, saudi arabia, egypt, israel, palestine, and iran, and iraq, and turkey. i sent a letter to the president saying that he should ask the new iranian president if he is good to his word. he did appoint someone i know

from their time at the united nations as foreign minister. it gives us time to work with iran on these important matters. >> on capitol hill, in the last couple of sessions, we have not seen a lot of experience or sophistication. i think our next senator should be someone who has the ability to examine a broad range of issues. internationally, to weigh out the sensitivity of these issues. protecting our national interests and understanding that we pay a dear price in not investing in domestic challenges. at the same time, maintain our position as the world leader. this is our challenge and the

responsibility of the next u.s. senator. >> for our next question, i want to blend the domestic with foreign relation issues. there is no better place to do that than china. a rising power. a true economic superpower. many wonder how the united states should position it self going forward. the chinese show an inclination to challenge american military forces around the world in some measured fashion. is the united states well- positioned to deal with the reality of a rising and competitive china? should we alter our position and stance with the chinese? >> i have confidence in the american worker and the american economy is number one in the globe.

i know we can continue to lead in that manner. we have to make sure that we are all played by the same walls and there is fairness. back to the issue of china, it is not a bad thing that they are rising. i'm telling you, what we're seeing with china is that they are often not willing to play by the same rules. whether it is with their currency. whether it is with their copyright infringements if america. whether it is about paying their workers a fair wage that reflects humanitarian interests. this is an area i feel very strongly about. we can compete and this. we need to turn our attention, as a country, to making our domestic economy stronger. we invest in research and development. there are real things that we can be doing to grow our economy and make it stronger. >> congressman. >> whenever we sent a trade agreement with another country,

like we did with china, we should not ask "what are the regulations for products entering and leaving the ports." we must ask what is acceptable behavior. and workers rights. in human rights. we did not do that with china. we do not do that with trade agreements elsewhere. we have been negotiating with them on their currency manipulation and making a little bit of headway. their currency manipulation has hurt us badly. our outsourcing has hurt us badly. not just in lost jobs, but, in an inferior merchandise and dangerous merchandise. dangers of equipment that we have been getting through the chinese shoddy manufacturers. we have to stand up to their

adventurism around the oceans and the world. >> china has emerged as an economic power because senators and members of the u.s. house of representatives enacted laws and influenced the regulatory process to permit our commerce, our manufacturing, and our jobs. it has been decades that we have turnover products in our homes and seen "made in china" on the bottom. there are places around the world with a can bolster investment. individual investors look to china as a way to grow their wealth. that is how we got to the situation with china. when you look at the pollution that hovers over many of the large cities, to the detriment

of the people who live there, china's policies as they relate to women and the inhumane treatment of women. that having the legal system dealing with women. we created that on capitol hill. >> we have to be worried about the unfairness of china. first, they do not open up their markets to american goods. it is an unfair trade practice. they put up barriers, and various ways, to our exports and make it difficult to export. they constantly subsidize and make it easy for their manufacturers to produce things and send them to the united states. the best example is renewable resources. i believe that we should be manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines here. china is cornering the market because they subsidize those

industries and make a cheaper for export. we have to get tough. they are working over us, when it comes to the economy. we have an obligation in the united states senate. we have jurisdiction over treaties. we have to make sure that these treaties operates in a fair way. >> i hear a lot of the same views. we have to make sure china plays by the same rules. copyright, trade, humane treatment of workers. we need to look at home. we have an incredible nation where we said that we can build our local economy strong. people tell me that manufacturing is dead in america, we showed, in newark, that with the right strategy manufacturers can grow jobs and grow exports. it can be done in america if we

have a congress that makes more investments in workforce training and education. research and development. these investments revised huge returns for the american economy. if we focus on growing strong and home, america will thrive. >> thank you. >> for pick up on that point. america is a strong nation. the strongest in the world. the wealthiest in the world. we are not second in manufacturing. china has caught up. we can prevail around the world. we do not have to do it through military force, although we must make sure that we check china's projection of military force. working with india and southeast

asia, working with our own strong workforce and our production capabilities, we can prevail. we have the strongest and best educated workforce in the world. we have a great production the ability. we should be aggressive in going around the world and not letting china by up all of the rare earth elements. >> i go to decision on capitol hill. everyone looked in awe when chinese investors bought the chrysler holding in new york city. we now know that a significant amount of real estate in manhattan is owned by the

chinese. it is difficult to acquire some of the most critique and real estate that exists. the reason we have a situation with china is because of the backslapping that goes on on capitol hill between and amongst members of the congress who would rather cut a deal, make some investments, instead of looking out for the benefits of the citizens that live in this country. i think it is time for the senate to reflect a different kind of a standard. the only winning you do that is by sending people to the united states senate who are going to change the paradigm. >> i believe that there are lessons they can be learned from china, in terms of our domestic economy. they are making huge investments. one of the problems in washington is due to the tea party. the tea party wants to have a sequester an across-the-board cuts. with to stop that mentality. we are investments to infrastructures -- we have to stop that mentality. we have to make investments to

infrastructure. in research and development, we have used our tax structure to bring back jobs from overseas. the chinese used cap structured and subsidies to encouragement and faxing. manufacturing can come back to unite states, but we have to encourage it. companies cannot move their money overseas. companies will stay here and manufactured here because of transportation cost. we're not doing that. we have to make a difference. >> that let me to where i want to go. there are those who say that it is time for america to do something to jumpstart our economic recovery. 162,000 jobs disappointed wall street. we had to do something with our

tax code to reflect the need of a modern-day economy. i harken back to the days when i was a young reporter covering bill bradley who came up with the fair tax. it modified the tax code that people were paying in the 1980s. is it time to tear apart the tax code? >> we are not a poor nation. the mentality in washington has become, we cannot do this or that. all we can do is provide the privilege to the fortunate. the high jobless rate that we

have an crumbling infrastructure, we can afford to take care of all those things and we cannot afford not to. it requires making sure that those who can pay, those who have benefited from our economy, and their fair share. that is not happening. take the a gentle of social security, we're talking about how social security is going to go bust. i'm saying that millionaires and billionaires should pay the same tax rate and we will not be talking about social security solvency. it will be solid and we can raise benefits. >> we absolutely need to simplify the tax code in this country. it is to consultative. and, working-class and middle- class families bear the brunt of the burden. we have a lot of things through the tax code to provide incentives and write-offs to

large corporations. those corporations do not reinvest in our economy. i just discussed the practice of an international company, a national chain in the united states that is significantly present in new jersey. in order to get around a loophole they claim their tax credits, they hire people and pay them 8.25 an hour. they retain those workers until they solidify those tax credits and then they lay them off. this is possible because of our tax code. >> we need to jumpstart the economy. there is a tea party effort to cut across the federal government and it is killing us and slowing growth.

ok? you can bring in more funds by reforming the tax code. i believe that everyone needs to pay more and it should not be on the backs of working families. corporations need to make it more every contribution. president obama suggested that we may be able to lower the corporate tax rate if you reform the tax code. they pay more, even though they are paying a lower rates. they do not have all the loopholes. take the companies that are spending money overseas and reform the tax code. give them encouragement to manufacture here. we sent money back to the cities to prevent layoffs of the police and firefighters. we need to do this again.

>> i don't have hair like you, but issues like this make you want to pull it all out. we have incredible growth, how do i know that? because we did in newark. creating thousands of jobs in newark. in the manufacturing sector, we knew we had strategy to make it grow. even for small businesses, we had to increase the access to the capital pool. that helps 50 or 60 is this is growth. why isn't congress doing the obvious things that we need to grow our economy? yes, we need to fix the tax code. we need to make it simpler. we can in best in research and development. we can do the things that i noted to happen. manufacturing can grow even more robustly.

>> thank you. need to invest. invest has fallen in disfavor in washington. there is such a thing. if we invest in infrastructure, we will be a weathier nation. that is the way it was with the g.i. bill. it paid back many times over. that's what we need to be doing now. invest in our public schools. making them accessible for motivated and prepared students to go to college. i am working with elizabeth warren to make sure that we have the lowest possible interest rates for student loans for

prepared students to go to college. we can do that. we do not need to have the interest rates that we have now. >> yes. something that is a concern to me is that when you look around the country, we have significant numbers of aging suburban communities that once had stabilized tax rates and tax renewables. those things are gone. it is time for the federal government to work with the president and governors of states to move forward a recreation of economies of crosses country. i use new jersey as an example. despite what you read about the bureau of labor statistics and what you hear about job creation, significant numbers of people in newark, trenton, asbury park, people continue to

be unemployed in the state. the jobs being created here are not jobs that are providing livable wages and one of the highest wage states in the country. >> there are references to congress being broken. i mentioned in my opening remarks. i believe that we can get things done in congress. i believe that we can get things done in congress. not the tea party. i believe they are the problem. but, there are mainstream republicans and we have to reach across the aisle. republicans are the majority in the house. find the moderates and explain to them that we have to get rid of the sequester. this is with the president was talking about in his speech. a grand bargain, or deal, we must do things to affect the tax rate.

we have to get rid of these tax loopholes. we would invest money in the economy grow jobs that have good benefits. we can make cuts. rational cuts. not across the board cuts. >> final word. >> congressman pallone is a noble person and has worked hard to do the things that he said. i'm telling you that we need to act. the media do a deed of point. we now make up 33% of all the development in the state from the commercial developments going on in newark right now. that is because we have a speaker that helped out with that. that's because the government -- a governor, will i disagree with on most issues, who helped. we're bringing community

activists together and extending apprenticeships for our kids. what i'm saying is that we can get this done. we need to have people who can bring people together in washington and bridge divides. we can do this. it is not time for excuses. there are too many people suffering in a tough economy. it is time for action and getting things done. >> the next question will go to madam speaker. >> i want to stay on investment. rather than taxes, let's talk about education. people view the most important investment in the future as educating our children. it is something that is talked about.

however, changing it from washington has not been affected. no child left behind has left a lot of children behind. >> we need a national agenda. the public educational system. the community college system. the university system. leadership is required at the federal level. the challenges presented do not have the expectation that washington weeks away. the demographics are different. the profiles and economies of the states are different. the federal government cannot craft a national agenda that is going to reflect the needs in each particular state.

without question, one of my opponents made references to science, technology, engineering, and math. we need to make broader investments. we need to make sure that our curriculums reflect those investments. >> i have been advocated a school modernization program where towns and counties can apply for grants to repair schools, like transportation. we should be sending money back to schools. we did this a few years ago after the recession. we did this in 2009. in terms of no child left behind, it has mis-functioned in many ways. these tests and the rating of schools. we need to invite teachers with skills and provide better

qualified teachers. that is where the government can play a role. i do have to say, and our district, with mayor booker, i do not think that vouchers are the answer. i am concerned about vouchers, which he supports. >> i believe in public schools strongly. it is a federal government responsibility and about taking action. all four of us have the same amount of legal authority of schools -- was schools in our district. we brought in -- with schools in our district. we brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. we have worked to expand the school day and give kids home libraries. this allows kids to learn at home. the federal government has a

role to play. if i am your united states senator, i'm not going to sit back and watch kids struggle. my policy paper was about dealing with childhood poverty. kids have empowerment with universal preschool. with prenatal care, they go to school. we need people who will take action. >> in addition to universal early education and making public schools work, we also have to pay attention to science and math education. there's no one, and the congress, who has been a bigger proponent of science then this scientist. i do not think that -- i'm

interested mayor booker was silent about vouchers that mr. pallone raced. i would like to know how doctors can help the schools? they siphon money away. a massive expansion of charter schools is not the answer for education for 15 million children. the idea -- the washington post that mayor booker is a vigorous proponent of this policy. >> since we have focused in on the troubled school district in our state, newark comes into destruction. newark has been a takeover district will stop paterson has been a takeover district. under the state's auspices, we

have seen no improvements in the operation of our schools. it is in your district, while it was under state control, that we saw massive fiscal impropriety in a state superintendent who contracted with a large company. we have not seen improvements with state intervention in schools. there is no question that there is political system that is involved with the school. we have to have competent professionals and legislators to address the issues that affect urban schools. >> major booker talked about governor christie's economic programs. governor christie has been doing

the opposite. he is the taking money away from the cities and making it harder to pay for firefighters and the police. he is not helping. the federal government should help. the governor is not doing that. mayor booker plan for education means vouchers and privatization of schools. maybe some money goes from private interests to help with the school, what is the impact? what is the impact, in terms of other things, that are involved that takeover. we are concerned about the lack of funds that are going to the public schools. if you have to have teachers and comeback of curriculum, it is not going to make for good public schools. >> i will never apologize for bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to help poor kids get a

better education. i want to bring up my silence about vouchers. these vouchers are for four kids below the poverty line who are stuck in failing schools. i support scholarship from dems to give them a lifeline. i find it interesting that congressman holt would bring it up as a criticism of me. he voted or the washington dc opportunity scholarship program he voted for a program that is similar to what i support. both congressman voted for on the bus those that support this. i would like them to explain why they have voted for the same position i have. >> the mayor should check the record. i have been in opponents of vouchers. they are an efficient method of

siphoning resources away from public schools. the idea is to bring excellent education to all children in america. not some children who are lucky enough to be in specialized schools. we should be investing in teachers. that is where it starts. we should not turn education into a market based enterprise where the products and the teachers are the means of production. we should be treating teachers as professionals. not someone who you hire or fire or go to a temporary agency for all stop in the professional -- for. we need to be investing in the public school system.

>> obamacare has been hailed by some. others say it is putting us on the road to bankruptcy and driving doctors away from the medical field. your take on it. is the affordable care act, the way it is constituted, are you satisfied with the way it stands in the way things are going? >> i helped to write the affordable care act. it is my proudest moments as a member of congress. the reason i think people should nominate me is because i care about issues that matter to people. do not believe the key party or those who tell you that the affordable care act is harmful. it is one of the best pieces of legislation that we have ever created. the bottom line is, americans

will be insured. they are now going to have a good benefit package. they were preconditions and destroyed discriminatory practices. by the end of this year, those problems go away and most americans have health insurance and a benefit package. there'll not pay more because of a pre-existing condition. discriminatory practices, for the most part, will go away. this is how congress works. congress can work and make a different stop the affordable care act is an example. >> i want to give the congressman credit. this is a great bill and the courageous leadership of our president has expanded opportunities for our residents in new jersey. young people who are getting to an older age can stay on their parent's insurance.

we do fight for the implementation and defended against those who want to -- voting almost 40 times in congress -- repeal it. the sustainability of our healthcare requires that we do more to control cost. it is unsustainable what we're doing right now. we can do a lot more to get waste, fraud, and abuse of the system and reward doctors for outcomes. we can make health care strong in america and implement the affordable care act. we can make sure that we do what is the sick to control costs in the long run. >> as a member of the authorizing committee, i helped to write it. it is an improvement over what existed three years ago. the affordable care act, we need to see that it is implemented.

over the objection of governor christie and those in congress who voted to repeal it 40 times over the last double of years. that's will not, by itself, as good as it is, as good as far as it goes, it will not bring all americans into the fold of excellent health care. we need to take the next step. universal single-payer health care coverage. that's a you bring excellent education to all. it is a way to put a check on the uncontrolled increase in spending. the other candidates said that that was impractical. that is another way of saying that we can only do things that we clear with the tea party. i want to know how mayor booker feels about it. >> i have been a proponent of single-payer, as well.

within the past several years, there was a long time spent with legislative leaders in his district with labor unions and health care advocates to work and advocate for a one-payer system. that is not what we could get. i am embracing the affordable care act. there are people in the state who have no access to healthcare. i commend the congressional delegation from new jersey that created an opportunity in our state to make sure that children can get insured. we need to provide access to doctors for all. wellness and prevention are going to because her stones, as you will implementation. as with any law, created at any level, when pieces don't operate correctly, you go back and correct it. >> i will be critical of my

colleagues who say that we need to go further. this is a major achievement. the tea party wanted to and is still trying to kill it. i'm a big single-payer advocate. the bottom line is that we could not get a single-payer system. we couldn't get a public option. you deal with what you can. senator can he always said that half a loaf is better than none. that is a reality. factor that in to controlling costs. with the affordable care act, cost for insurance will be 50% less than what was before the affordable care act. when he talked about single- payer, that sounds great and it is wonderful. the fact the matter is, we

cannot give the poster for that. most people will be covered. this be an effective program. >> thank you. there is still urgency. we need to do everything we can to implement this. again, we cannot wait. we have to get it done. we're showing a pathway to reduced costs by promoting that are held. we are dealing with childhood obesity. we have done this in newark to lower costs for seniors. even more than what we do with our newark-based prescription drug plan. there are things that we can do to build upon this. we cannot wait. we have to get going now. the urgency -- not just for people having health insurance but, for preventing people from getting sick in the first place and giving them access to preventive care.

for children, too. >> universal single-payer system is not pie in the sky. that is what va and medicare is. it works. it works better than what most people have more what so many people do not have, at all. it is doable. the idea that we cannot hold out a vision of what is best for america because the tea party is going to object, that hold us back. that is up the definition of leadership, in my book. >> talking to the issue of what system is better, the reality is, there are immunities that are losing hospitals to guys hospitals cannot provide charity care. that is despite initiatives in obesity control. in a city like newark, we have added the closure of hospitals.

columbus hospital, saint michaels hospital is teetering on the brink. if there is not political support, we will see more hospitals close and vulnerable communities. with the affordable care act will do is provide a way for hospitals to be compensated for the care that is being subsidized by the state. >> last question. we are up against the clock. you are democrats. you've gotten rave reviews from the papers. you're the best candidates that they have seen a long time. there's a good chance that what before of you will end up being the u.s. senator and go to an

institution is dominated by democrats in fighting against another body is dominated by republicans. why should the voters send any of you there? >> i do not understand why it is a criticism that i have worked with governor christie. we disagree on almost anything. despite our differences, i'm the mayor of the largest city of the state and i have to work with the governor. we worked together and created the largest economic developments in newark since the 1960s. that is what you have to do is united states senator. you have to find a way to work with people that you disagree with you stop not to criticize and yell at them.

find common ground when it exist. even if it is only 10% of the things between you. is the problem washington. if you like what you're getting from washington, stick with it. it is not working. if you want the same experience, take the same experience. we need a different experience. not to washington experience. >> as a scientist, i listen to people and study evidence, follow the facts, and take it where it leads, to a conclusion. that is true for all this. if you start with the facts, you can get things done in a divided and polarized system in washington. that is how i got the mental health and suicide programs gone for soldiers and veterans. that is what i have done with student aid.

setting up money for teachers. historic preservation for foreign languages that i did was senator lautenberg. you find common ground and you can get things done. that is what i have done in washington and i have a vision. >> talent comes in a skirt often. the lack of women representation in new jersey's congressional delegation must end. i have served at every level of government. i have worked in newark's municipal government when the man was in high school. i have sat at every desk at

every level of government. municipal, county, state. i have worked in higher education. i have worked in the private sector. i know the challenges that face the state and this country. i believe that i have the capability to address any issue that is of note to new jersey's nexen her. i think, with that, the scope of experience in working with new jersey's issues. >> being an experienced legislator does not make indifference. i work with my colleagues on either side of the aisle to make a difference, in writing the affordable care act, cleaning up toxic waste sites, these are all

examples of how you can get things done. we need an experienced legislator. i know that the mayor feels that being the mayor qualifies him. he does not work with a lot of the congressman. half of the people in the senate are former members of congress. i've worked on legislation with them over the years. if you think about what i have done and what i can do to make a difference for working families, growing economy, creating jobs, changing the tax code, working with the president to grow the economy, this is what you need. a congressman with experience. >> it's time for closing statements. we barely scraped the surface.

i apologize. i want to get to as many as we can. it is time for closing statements. >> we have seen clear differences between the candidates. we had to protect working families and look out for the little guy. that is what i want to do in the united states senate. i have a myself on senator lautenberg. people think that i can get things done. like senator lautenberg, i will never couple mice my principles. i was one of the first -- i will never compromise my principles. i voted against defense of marriage act because i thought it was wrong.

i was an early opponent of the iraq war. i think you have to stand up for your principles. we're all democrats. i believe in the democratic party and i believe that i can make a difference. i mentioned the fight to clean up toxic websites. the fight for the affordable care act. i can make a difference as the united states senator. i ask for your vote on august 13th. thank you. >> time for the closing statement from mayor booker. you have 40 years of experience between these two congressmen. if you like what you are getting out of washington, you should go for them. to me, we do not need more washington experience. we need a different experience in washington. when washington could not pass a jobs bill, we got to work. we were able to create local

loan funds and other programs that created jobs. in washington, we could not get right for our veterans come home, we started the first ever been impossible and stop. -- that are in -- veteran's one- stop. enough is enough. we've seen what 40 years of experience is getting us. a sign for different leadership. good is not enough and better is possible. i hope i get the chance to be your senator because i know that we can do better. >> i think the organizers and the viewers. the citizens of new jersey need to know what they will get in the next senator from new jersey. in my case, i have been out there and very public. i've been running this campaign on issues and specific issues.

i have a record that is clear. the new york times said that i am the most able legislator of the group. you have the position that i hold out. i wish we could have more of these debates. we need to know where mayor booker is on these things. i say that i support breaking up the big banks that are too big to fail and are too big to exist. i support a carbon tax. i support stopping spying on americans. mayor booker did not support any of those. he does not support single- payer, either. i have a list that is available for display and i have not hit or equivocated. i reflect a progressive agenda that will help the people of new jersey.

that will extend to all americans. >> i would like to thank njtv for allowing us to engage in this dialogue. i like to say that it is time to break up the old boy's network that exists on capitol hill. the way we do that is by making certain that new jersey's congressional delegation reflects the people that live in the state. 53% of our population is composed of women. households are headed by women. whether they be widowed, divorced, never married. it is time for issues that are important to average, working, every day new jerseyans.

it is time to have a center that will represent working class people and people who are trying to get a toehold to become part of the middle class. it is not matter that you have fraternization with other states. this campaign is about new jersey and no place else on the plan. >> thank you very much. to all of the candidates, thank you very much. this first debate is over. we want to send it to the studio next door. and, to our host here at the university. thank you to all of the candidates. a reminder that the special election to choose the candidate

is a week from tomorrow. we have had the privilege to bring all this to you. many issues that we tried to get to, we try to cover them as much as possible. we tried to cover them as much as possible. thank you very much. we hope to see you back here once again. good night. from almost here at njtv. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] councilmayor and chairman vincent gray faced each other and one of the most expensive and contentious

elections in d.c.'s recent history. $5 million was spent to hold onto his seat and vincent gray spent only 1.2 million dollars but one the public over as an affable and effective chairman. office inter he took mayor,rown who ran for said he was paid and promised a job during the elections. federal investigators soon discovered much of his story was true. they also uncovered an even bigger secret -- the shadow campaign. basically, you had a campaign going on that is the regular campaign you see. then you have another set of rightwho are in an office next to the gray campaign. during the campaign, there is so much going on. you had several workers actually the otherg about

workers because they know they are getting paid more and there was a lot of confusion as to who was paying them, etc. it wasn't until a year later that folks started adding things together when federal investigators began asking questions and they realized the folks who were next door, we can't find any record of them in the campaign-finance records. how did they get paid and who was in charge of them? >> that's tonight at 8:00 on c- span's "q&a." >> if we can weigh the needs of others, those forces wringing about this suffering. >> the white house is a bully

pulpit and you ought to take advantage of it. >> obesity in this country is nothing short of a public health crisis. >> somebody had their own agenda. >> there is so much influence in that office. >> i think they serve as a window on the past to what was going on with american women. becomes the chief confidant to -- the only person the world that man can trust. >> they are in many cases more interesting as human beings that their husbands, if only because they are not first and foremost limited by political ambition. >> roosevelt is one of the unsung heroes. when you go to the white house today, it is edith roosevelt's white house area -- white house.

>> there was too much looking down and i think it was little too fast. not enough change of pace. >> yes, mamma. >> in every case, done whatever has fit her personality and interests. >> she later wrote in her memoir that she said i, myself never made any decisions. decided what was important and when to present it to my husband. stop and think about how much power that is. it's a lot of power. part of the battle against thatr is to fight the fear accompanies the disease. >> she transformed the way we look at these bugaboos and made it possible for countless people